


Brushfire

by elo_elo



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Earth, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Magic, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cullenlingus (Dragon Age), Developing Friendships, Discussion of Rape, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Healing, Healing Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Smut, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Will update tags once i eventually stop sucking at it., love a rugged boy with a soft center
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:41:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elo_elo/pseuds/elo_elo
Summary: Fleeing her abusive ex, Livie Trevelyan heads to a friend’s long-neglected summer home to try and pick up the pieces of her life.Haunted by his time as a combat medic in Afghanistan and determined to stay on top of his sobriety, Cullen Rutherford searches for peace in his work as a wilderness EMT.The two of them meet in a sleepy mountain town in the middle of its coldest, snowiest winter in decades. Will they be able to overcome their demons and find solace in each other?~on hold indefinitely~
Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Female Trevelyan, Female Inquisitor/Cullen Rutherford
Comments: 88
Kudos: 152





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cullen is honestly my favorite but I find it hard to write him so it’s taken me forever to finally pull the trigger on this. I really hope you guys like what I have planned <3.

There’s a look people have when they get out of the hot springs. Salt-scrubbed and sleepy. And she has it in spades; the smoky, slightly turned smell of the sulfur waters following her into the coffee shop, wafting like steam off the pools. He can tell she’s a tourist by the way her skin is an almost scalded pink. People tend to get like that after their first dip. His own skin turned the same embarrassing shade of fuchsia his first dip in the mineral springs back in early March. It’s a dead giveaway. And besides, he’s never seen her before. Which doesn’t necessarily mean all that much in a ski town like this but she’s got too slight a build to be hiking this late in the season and all the slopes have been shut down over the weekend on account of the blizzard. Most of the skiers headed home at the first sign of weather. But she might be staying for a while – more than the average tourist at least – because The Hanged Man isn’t the kind of place most tourists accidentally stumble onto.

It’s across the river from the springs, so close you can sit outside in the summer and watch the bathers, but it’s tucked down a steep little drive, hidden in the alleyway back behind the town’s sad, brutalist DMV. Not exactly the friendliest looking spot, especially with the tall snowdrifts littering the narrow little parking lot that afternoon. Cullen takes a sip of his coffee and pages through the book he borrowed from Rylen. Some kind of crime procedural he hasn’t really managed to get into. He’s read the last few lines at least a dozen times now and finally admits defeat, closing it and turning his attention, as covertly as he can, back to the woman. She’s been standing in the middle of the café for a little too long, looking a little lost, before she finally straightens up, shivering a little and heads to the counter. Some of her hair is tangled up in her scarf, the ends curling from where she’d gotten them wet in the springs. It looks just a touch red in the light. He watches her lean down, watches her read the menu once, twice, before she looks up at the barista.

The owner keeps Jim working the midday shifts because that’s when the shop is the slowest. He’s a nice guy, just a little weird. Cullen sees him at NA meetings every so often, he mostly keeps to the back, hasn’t once shared. They, obviously, don’t talk about that in the café. But today Jim’s awkwardness is bumping up hard against this woman’s obvious nerves and Cullen tries not to eavesdrop on their halting conversation. But he can’t help himself.

“Just some coffee,” she says in a voice almost too quiet for him to hear, nails drumming nervously on the counter. Cullen takes a sip of his own coffee and tries to pretend he isn’t interested. And he’s not, not really. He’s had a hell of a night and any distraction is welcome. And she’s cute and she’s new and even if dating is so far off his table that he can barely imagine it, he can’t really take his eyes off her. She looks wildly out of place here. Like he must have when he first showed up.

He doesn’t catch her name when Jim takes it for the reward’s program – another surefire indication that she’s more than just passing through – but Cullen watches as she fusses with the creamer, fingers trembling a little, spilling it over the side of her mug. She curses, brushing her hair back from her face, dragging a little foam from the mug through it. 

Cullen’s own hands are always shaking these days, just the slightest tremor. His shrink thinks it’s psychosomatic because it’s never a problem at work. He doesn’t much care what it is as long as it doesn’t interfere with his job. Besides, he’s tired of thinking about it, tucks his narrow paperback into the pocket of his coat and stands, rolling his sore shoulders. The woman glances up at him, apparently noticing him for the first time, but quickly turns her attention back to her coffee.

Cullen nods to Jim behind the counter and heads out into town, pulling his coat a little higher around his neck. He’s still in his tactical snow boots and what was barely a consideration earlier in the day now feels almost unbearably heavy as he starts up the steep alleyway toward Main Street. The weather, at least, is improving. There’d been soft flurries all morning, the gentle remnants of last night’s whiteout conditions. The sky’s a dull feather grey, obscuring the sun, and the sidewalks thick with slush, the temperature hovering just above freezing. Miserable, actually. Cullen thinks he might prefer the blizzard.

Cullen ducks around the ski shop, notes that they’ve closed a little early today, same as the bakery though he catches a whiff of that distinct scent of rising bread through a barely cracked window. He passes a long row of touristy shops. The kind where you can buy little bottles of gold leaf and cheap knockoffs of Native American beadwork. One has an embossed wood sign in the window. _The Mountains are Calling and I Must Go._ He tries not to roll his eyes. He’s pulled too many young tech types from Denver out of snowdrifts this ski season to not feel just a little bitter about a sign like that.

There’s fewer tourists than usual out on the streets. The blizzard saw to that, but it’s still a quiet relief when he turns onto his street, heading just a couple blocks up off the little row of shops. A sharp wind rolls in off the peaks and Cullen tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat, keeps his head down. A headache’s been working its way into his temples all afternoon. He’d tried to keep it at bay with the coffee, but, in all honesty, he’d expected this. He’s been up all night. The powers that be opened the pass yesterday afternoon even with a blizzard forecasted and the snow getting heavier with each passing minute. It left emergency response scrambling to prepare for the worst. Avalanche mitigation left the cliff faces mostly stable, but Cullen had his team ready to go in case some out of towner without snow tires skidded off the narrow mountain pass and took to wandering to forested gulches looking for help. There hadn’t been any incidents and thank the Maker for that, but Cullen’s still stiff as a board, feeling brittle and sore. But he can’t blame how shitty he feels all on work. He knows, even if he can’t really admit it to himself, that the headache is mostly his own doing. His doctor has him on a strict naltrexone regimen and he’s been skipping doses. He knows it’s probably that macho bullshit he picked up on deployment, but hell, he really is convinced he can muscle this one out on his own. Hopes that, at the very least, a little self-awareness is worth something. Doesn’t seem to be the way his body has been rioting the past couple weeks. There’s an itch behind his eyes that feels sometimes almost feral. The pounding in his head sometimes so intense he’s not sure he’s gonna be able to take the pain another minute. But his headache today isn’t of that variety, as far as he can tell. _Thank the Maker._ Cullen hunkers down as another icy wind comes rolling down the road, the sun just slipping under the horizon, spreading blue darkness out across the streets. He’ll make himself another stiff cup of coffee when he gets home, he’ll take a long, hot shower to work the kinks out. Warm thoughts to keep the wind at bay.

Rylen doesn’t greet him when he comes in, but Carroll does. The Saint Bernard comes rushing up to the door, nearly knocking him off his feet. “He’s in a mood.” Rylen calls from his spot on the couch.

Cullen bends down to rub the slobbering pup behind his ears, wincing a little as the movement reignites a pain in his shoulders. “Did you take him out?”

“Let him run around the backyard yeah.” Their backyard is barely big enough for the poor dog to turn around in.

Cullen frowns. “So you _didn’t_ take him for a walk then?” Rylen waves him off and, for once, Cullen lets him. Rylen was up over on the pass when the blizzard hit, one of the crews doing avalanche mitigation. They’ve both had long nights. Cullen can see the bags under his eyes from across the room. His own weariness sitting heavier on him now.

Cullen relinquishes the dog with a soft pat to his head and winds around the couch into the kitchen. The house is dim, just the soft glow from the tv and fridge, a single line of warm light coming in from a lamp in the entryway. He pauses at the side of the couch, glancing at the TV. Rylen’s watching the weather, watching as fresh blizzard warnings tick across the screen. Red Mountain Pass is closed with no reopening date, and their own pass, Wolf Creek, has been closed again too. There’s gonna be a lot of fussy tourists in town tomorrow, angry that they’re either gonna have to hunker down or spend the rest of their long weekend skirting around the mountains toward the New Mexico border just to try and get back onto an open road toward Denver. “Leave work at work.” Rylen just snorts. Cullen checks his phone in his pocket, makes sure the sound’s on. He’s technically got the night off, but they’re a skeleton crew out here and he’s got the most training.

Cullen opens up the fridge, stares at its contents unseeing until he blinks himself back down to earth. It’s pretty bare. Eggs, milk, a few of Rylen’s beers tucked in behind the ketchup. Cullen grabs a leftover container, sniffs the food, then, deciding it doesn’t smell too ripe, plops it into the microwave. He notes a few splotches of whatever frozen dinner Rylen’s eating on the microwave door and calls back over his shoulder. “Anyone ever teach you to cover your damn plate before you nuke it?”

“Nope, you’re the only mom I’ve got, Rutherford.” Cullen scoffs, rummaging around in their pantry for a bag of chips, something salty to fill his stomach. “Met a girl last night.”

He glances over at the couch. “Good for you.”

Rylen laughs. “Not like that. Up on the pass.”

Cullen pops a couple chips into his mouth. They’re a little stale. “We didn’t get any calls.”

“She wasn’t hurt. Just kind of panicked.” Rylen takes a messy mouthful of his tv dinner. “Said she was from LA, actually. First time she’d ever driven in snow.”

Cullen shakes his head. “Andraste’s grace, _that’s_ bad luck.

“I know. Poor thing was shaking like a leaf.”

“I’ll bet.” Cullen sets his bag of chips down by the microwave. The tv blares a winter weather advisory and Rylen reaches for the remote to mute it. “Why didn’t she just hunker down over in Alamosa for the night. Hell of a lot safer than braving the pass.”

Rylen shrugs. “Not sure. Seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.”

“Huh” 

“She was cute.”

Cullen frowns. “Not interested. Quit trying to set me up.”

Rylen laughs. “Who said anything about you? Maybe I’m gonna move in on this little damsel in distress.”

“Charming, really charming.” Rylen snorts. They let it drop, filling the silence with loose small talk. Weather this, local gossip that between bites until Cullen’s brain is pounding a hole in his skull. He rinses his dishes in the sink then bids Rylen goodnight.

“Oh,” Rylen says, looking at him from over the back of the couch, “got a letter from your sister today. Left it in the entryway.”

Cullen pauses at the bottom step. His headache doubles down. “Thanks, man.”

“Who even writes letter these days, shit,” he hears Rylen say over the TV.

The cool cloth has helped some, even if a few stray drops have come running down the bridge of his nose into his eyes. His head feels better, but his chest is tight again. That sort of bottomless feeling he’s been getting lately, ever since he stopped using, worse now in the dark cold of the winter. It should be better, he thinks, the winter. It’s so different than Afghanistan’s dry heat. But it isn’t. The darkness must be getting to him and it’s suddenly very hard to breathe. Cullen hears Carroll nudge open his bedroom door, feels his bed dip as the heavy dog settles at his feet. His arrival does nothing to dull the panic. So familiar that it’s more infuriating than frightening but it still pulls him under. He inhales on ten, exhales on ten. It gets harder each time. He kneads his temples, the sudden desire to run warring with the heaviness in his limbs. “Stop.” He says out loud. The word hangs in the quiet stillness of his bedroom. He is in the Springs. He is home, in his own bed. There is nothing dangerous here in his bedroom. There is nothing he needs to fight. Carroll shifts until his back is against Cullen’s leg. Cullen reaches down, lets the dog’s soft fur bury his fingers. They won’t stop trembling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

The trouble started in Denver. Well no, the trouble started long before that, but it was in Denver where the feeling really coalesced. She’d walked off that plane into DIA as unsteady as a newborn deer, her anxiety so thick she could taste it in the air around her. Her body so absolutely rigid that when she’d tried to take a drink from the water fountain beside an airport bar, she’d nearly choked, her throat tight, her chest tighter.

It had been in the crowded airport bathroom when everything hit her. _Really_ hit her. When she’d looked up from the sink and found a shell looking back at her, the dark circles under her eyes so deep they looked like bruises. And the single narrow bruise at the base of her jaw bright against her skin. The only one she couldn’t really cover up. Livie didn’t want to think about the others, on her wrists and her collarbone, the deep dark one that runs from her left breast to her hip bone. It made her feel almost canned, like she was playing a role that didn’t fit. The kind of battered woman she’d see on those billboards on the side of the Glendale Freeway. She didn’t want to think about who she is now, who she had to become to let this happen. So she didn’t. She’d wandered out of that bathroom, hoping to all the rest of the world she looked like anyone else arriving in Denver, feeling inside like a fugitive and like a child in equal measure.

She’d headed to the taxi stand to call Dorian, needing the sound of cars and people to fill all the terrifying empty spaces in her mind, hoping the background noise would mask the way her voice shook. It didn’t. _Oh sweetheart_ , he’d said before even saying hello. _I’m fine,_ she’d said without even bothering to try and sound that way. He’d tutted, but hadn’t said anything else about it. A small mercy.

He’d given her directions out of town, mentioned something about a local caretaker coming up to the house to make sure it was still standing and then left her alone with her own racing thoughts, in a city she’d never been before.

She stayed one night in an airport hotel, where she tossed and turned on the stiff sheets. Paid cash, like some kind of criminal on the run, for a Jeep older than she is with a mileage so high she could barely fathom it. Stood for a long time in the waning light of a Safeway parking lot, looking at the car that was supposed to be her chariot, her knight in shining armor, and finding it a flimsy protection for a terror so intense her whole body bent to the force of it.

And as she stands on the damp tile in this gas station in the middle of absolute nowhere, that terror is still churning inside of her. And that trouble that started so much earlier than Denver feels so real, so palpable, that Livie’s sure she could reach out and touch it.

“So it’s closed?” She taps her nails on the counter, a steady, loud rhythm. The woman behind the counter shoots her a look and she retracts her fingers into fists.

“Was closed.” The woman licks the pad of her thumb and turns the page of her magazine. The door dings, a wintry chill rolling in through the open door. Livie bounces nervously on the balls of her feet, fights the urge to start in on the skin around her nails with her teeth. “Pass opened up again thirty minutes ago.” The woman looks at her from over the top of her magazine. “You’re lucky.”

Livie doesn’t feel very lucky. Her nose is so cold it’s running, her cheeks burning and numb. “I mean…is it safe?”

The woman shrugs. The door dings again. A man coughs loudly back by the bathrooms, kicking the snow off his boots. “Sure. They got crews up there doing avalanche mitigation.”

“ _Avalanche mitigation._ ”

The woman flips another page in her magazine. She’s got lipstick on her left front tooth. The door dings again. “Yep.”

“As in…like…there could be an avalanche?”

“You’re in the mountains, sweetheart.” Livie glances out toward the pumps. She can only see the outline of her car through the thick falling snow. “You got four-wheel drive?” Livie glances back at the woman, swallowing hard, and nods. “All-weather tires?”

“Snow, I think.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Livie looks again out into the snow, pulling her thin coat a little closer around her. It’s more of a windbreaker really. For those few and far between days in Los Angeles when the skies darken and the temperature dips below 65. Last Livie checked, the temperature outside was 18 and dropping.

She’d meant to get a proper coat, it was on that hastily scrawled list she’d kept hidden in her desk at work, but everything had happened so much faster than she’d expected. Best laid plans and all that. She hadn’t had time. To do anything but run. Livie reaches up to her neck, stops herself just before she finds that tender bruise with her fingers. “I’ve never driven in the snow.”

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Well, drive slow then.” The little clock behind the counter ticks 3:30. Then, like she can read Livie’s mind, the woman glances up again from her magazine. “Gonna be dark soon. Better get a move on.”

She’s alone when she starts up the pass. The snow has, at least, slowed a little. She can see the road now, can see, in full effect, just how steep and high and terrifying those mountains look from where she’s idling at the base of them. Livie can’t even see the pass she’s supposed to take. Just the mouth of it, flanked by two blinking signs, and then dark pines, sloping up to a summit hidden by the storm churning at the peak. Livie puts the car into four-wheel drive and takes a deep breath. Her family used to vacation in Aspen when she was young. The roads weren’t like this, but there was snow. She hopes that maybe she’d learned something, just by watching.

It’s slow going at first, which is fine by her. The jeep jostles her, rolling over the snowpack, gripping onto the places where they’ve sanded the ice. If she just focuses on moving forward and not on the darkness, or the heavy snow or the way her engine has started to make a chugging sound that cannot be good, then she can stay calm. She’s fallen in line with a little convoy. A big dodge in front of her, chains dangling from its tires. In front of him, the blinking lights of a plow. They snake up the pass, the road narrowing the higher they go, ground sloping away to darkness beside the narrow road, the other just a solid, jagged cliff face. There’s a quiet beauty to the tall pines, reaching powerfully toward the sky, heavy with a snow so soft and so white it looks almost painted on, so soft she wants to reach out and touch them, leave her mark in the untouched powder. She traces them up to her tops, up to where, she imagines, a starry sky is hidden behind those dense clouds.

Howe always had cold hands, his fingers like ice on her skin. And she feels them hard on her jaw in that moment, feels him wrench her head back to face the road. _Pay attention._ His voice is a loud hiss in her ear. _You never fucking pay attention._ Her tires catch ice. It’s slower than it should be, far less dramatic, but she still can’t stop it. Livie bounces in her seat, hitting the brakes so hard they squeal, her other tire catching ice, sending her spinning slowly off the road. The snow cushions the car, the jeep settling in the ditch with a quiet thud. Livie looks up from where she’s curled in on herself. The quiet in the jeep is so thick she can hear her own heartbeat. She brings her chilled hands to her face, then runs them down her legs, taking a quick inventory of herself. Then her car. It seems to be all in one piece. Then, with a sudden dawning horror, Livie flips around to look at her backseat. Sighs hard in relief when she finds it just as dark and empty as she’d been before. His voice had been so real she could almost feel his breath on the shell of her ear. She exhales a ragged breath, resting her forehead against the cold leather of the steering wheel. Howe is, as far as she knows, a thousand miles away. And even if he’s scrambling, even if he’s knocking on every door of every person she’s ever known in Los Angeles, he won’t be able to find her. Not yet, at least. Not for a while. Only she and Dorian know where she is. Out here in the wilderness. She’s here. She’s alone. She’s here and alone. _Oh Maker, she’s here and alone._ Livie sits up bolt straight. The convoy she’d been following is gone, the road now so dark it fades into abyss where her headlights don’t reach. The snow is falling heavier now, dense flakes sticking to her jeep’s hood, to the road. Darkness fills the places where the snow isn’t. Those spots of snow almost bright, even in the dead of night. She can’t see the canyon beside the road, but she can feel its heavy drop. “Okay,” Livie takes a deep breath, “okay.” She shifts into second gear, trying to remember what she’d gleaned from her quick look over the jeep’s owner’s manual. The engine turns over and over, her tires squealing but going nowhere. She’s kicking up snow, her steering wheel fighting her as the ice rocks her tires.

“Fuck,” she scrapes her hair back with her nails, “fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.” The knock on her window nearly sends her through the roof. She shifts in her seat, leaning towards the center console. The man knocks again. Livie hesitates, glancing out the far window. All she can see is snow and rock. She shores herself up, rolls the window down a few inches.

He has playful eyes, nice eyes. And even though Livie knows that’s ridiculous, it makes her roll her window down a little further. The man is bundled, the skin she can see pink and wind-whipped from the cold. Behind him, a battered white truck. _Colorado Avalanche Information Center_ printed in bold lettering on the side. The number underneath it partially obscured by snow. The man pulls his balaclava down under his chin and smiles. “You doing alright?”

Livie manages a laugh. It sounds strange to her own ears and she tries to remember the last time she laughed for real. “Been better.”

The man laughs too, puts his hands on his hips. He seems wholly unbothered by the weather deteriorating all around them and that soothes something inside of her. “Well, I can certainly see that.” He crouches down to take a better look at her tires, pats her car door like the rump of a horse. “Let’s get you out of this ditch, huh?”

“Please.” She says, breathless. He grins. And when he steps a little closer to her car, Livie gets a better look at him. He has a wide, mischievous smile. A ruddy, gingery complexation and when he moves to grab at the radio clipped to his belt, Livie can see tattoos on every inch of his exposed skin, the biggest an intricate Celtic knot tattooed on at the base of his neck.

The radio crackles when he brings it to his mouth. “Jack Rylen, mile marker 182. I got a car on the side of the road. Gonna assist off the pass. Over.” He waits for a moment, waggling his eyebrows at her. Livie leans back in her seat and takes a deep breath, lets herself feel, for a moment, safe. She can’t remember the last time she felt like this. Funny that is should be here, on the side of a mountain.

The radio crackles back to life. “I hear ya, Rylen. Be advised heavy snowpack on the downswing. No salt/sand. Over”

“Gotcha. I’ll take ‘er slow. Over and out.” Rylen pats the side of her door again. “Let’s get off this rock, huh?”

She’d felt an almost eerie calm as they crawled over the pass, Rylen following her the whole way in his truck, but once the two of them pull into the snow-packed parking lot of a gas station, that familiar tightness settles back in her chest. From what she can tell, the rest of the town is a little further down the road. The little Food Mart at the base of the pass just a pit stop. It’s lit up like a stadium, floodlights illuminating the pumps and a row of semi-trucks parked along on end of the plowed lot. A few truckers are mulling about outside, smoking or spitting chew into the drifts. There’s something lonely about this gas station, the shallow ridge above it dotted with quiet pines and that loneliness echoes inside of Livie. She fights the sudden urge to cry, the sudden urge to curl up like a little child and hide. She can’t do that now. There will be time to break down later.

Careful to stay on the plowed patches, Livie pulls her car up beside the closest pump and takes a long, deep breath. Her stomach growls and, maker, she cannot for the life of her remember the last time she had a proper meal. The gas station’s got to have something and she’s about to lean over to rummage for loose change in her purse when Rylen’s truck pulls up beside her. He swings out, slamming the door behind him. When he winds around the truck, she notices that he’s a little lankier than she first thought. Long and wiry. It reminds her, a little, of Howe. She pushes the thought aside, tries not to flinch when he takes a few steps toward her. “So, you headed to a hotel in town then?”

“A friend’s house. I’m, um, taking care of it for the winter.”

Rylen frowns. “You got an address?”

Livie hesitates. She’s not really all that interested in someone besides Dorian knowing where she’s going to be living, but she doesn’t want to turn her phone back on to get a map, afraid of what she’ll find when she does. She looks up toward town and sees nothing but snow. She can’t make that on her own. Livie swallows hard. “It’s, um, it’s up on Rock Ridge Road.”

Rylen whistles. “Steep up there.”

“Is it?”

“Very. ‘Specially on a night like tonight.”

“Shit.” Livie glances back over at the main road, watches as pickup truck limps along toward town. “Is there like…a hotel I could stay in tonight?”

Rylen shakes his head. “Not likely. Got a lotta skiers stranded in town on account of the blizzard. Can’t imagine there’d be a vacancy here tonight.” Livie frowns, crossing her arms over her chest. She starts to bounce on the balls of her feet, heart suddenly pounding. She looks back at her jeep. Could she sleep in there? Hunker down and then try to make it up to the house in the daylight. She feels cold just thinking about it. “Hey.” Livie blinks up to look at him. Rylen clears his throat, gesturing vaguely toward the road, “why don’t I follow you up. You get stuck I’ll drive you back down and we can figure something out.”

Livie chews her lip, shaking her head. “You’ve got a busy night. I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

Rylen shrugs. “Eh, not really. Got word few minutes ago they’re closing the pass again. My night’s pretty much done.”

Livie worries her jaw, holding herself tightly. It is bitterly cold, a sharp wind coming in off the pass. She tries not to be terrified, tries hard to be rational. This guy is nice, sure, but…but…another cold wind howls down the road. Livie’s fingers have gone numb. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

She’s still shaking when she pulls up into the driveway. The drive had been so steep that as she gets out of her car, snow crunching under her boots, she wonders if she’ll ever be able to get down again. The caretaker, at least, plowed the road before she got there, but more than once she’d been sure that her little jeep was going to start rolling backward, would pitch over the steep drive down into the tree-lined gulch. It had only been the steady headlights of Rylen’s truck behind her that kept her from descending back into total panic.

That panic resurfaces as she shuts the door to her jeep. The house is tucked up against a rock face, flanked on two sides by thick pines. A Frank Lloyd Wright looking house, all sharp angles and tall windows. She’s not a bit surprised that Dorian’s parents own it. A sleek ski chalet, right out of the 1980s. It looks nice. And lonely. Livie shivers in the driveway then turns back to the jeep. She’d only managed to pack a single bag. A backpack that looks even smaller than she remembers in the backseat. It’s light in her hands

Rylen pulls his truck up and rolls down his window. “You gonna be okay from here?”

Livie swings her bag over her shoulder. “Yeah, yeah thanks”

“Alright,” He pats his steering wheel, “good stuff.” He pauses. “You know about the springs down here?”

She shifts on her feet. “Yeah.” She hesitates. Dorian mentioned the mineral springs once or twice. Long before they’d ever planned something like this. She can barely remember. “Sort of.”

“Go on down there tomorrow. Get yourself warmed up. Tell ‘em Rylen sent ya and they’ll cut the price in half.”

“Okay, sure.” She swallows hard. “Thank you.”

He waves her off. “Don’t mention it. You’ve had a rough night.”

Livie manages a weak laugh. He’s about to roll his window up again when she stops him. “Hey, um, do you know of any place I can get a decent cup of coffee.”

“Hanged Man. Across the river from the springs.”

She pats his half-open window. “Thanks, I’m…well I guess I’m moving here. For a little while at least. So I should…probably know…where stuff is, you know.” She flinches, chastising himself for telling him that, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Well, welcome to the Springs.” She smiles, then takes a step back, lets him roll his window back up.

She watches him head back down the drive, watches as his taillights disappear then sets her backpack down on the stone path, protected from the snow by the house’s awning. The path is lit, but it does little to mitigate the heavy darkness. She takes a long, slow breath, then turns to look at the house. The darkness at her back feels suddenly full. She hurries inside.

Livie sets her backpack down on the kitchen table with a heavy thud. Dorian had talked such a big game about how rundown this place was, but Livie likes it. It isn’t rundown, though she can see why it wouldn’t be to Dorian’s taste. It’s clean and well-maintained, just a light layer of dust on the counters and most of the furniture. It’s a little outdated maybe, but has the sort of vintage, seventies ski vibe that feels chic. And different. And different feels safe. So, yeah, she likes it. Likes the dark wood and eclectic tile, the chrome fixtures. She can live here. For a little while at least.

She leans on the kitchen island and just breathes, lets her shoulders slump. There is a silence in the house, the kind that she’d forgotten all about. The ticking of a wall clock, the humming of the central heating. The snow is piling quietly outside on the window sills. No heavy footsteps, no slamming doors. Her body unclenches and then, like it’s forgotten how, seizes up again. Her chest tightens. Livie frowns, fishing for her phone from her pocket. She turns it on, then immediately silences it. It feels like a bomb in her hand. Like the most dangerous thing she’s ever touched. She sets it in the middle of the kitchen island and tries to ignore it. Turns to the stove to test the gas. It comes roaring to life. She shuts it off and turns to the fridge, opening it. Empty, but she can work with that. Maybe in the light of day, the drive will seem less intimidating. She’ll ask around at the springs Rylen mentioned. It can’t be _that_ hard. She had lots of friends before Howe. She had a whole life. Maker, her chest is still so tight. Livie glances over at her phone. Notification after notification pings on the screen Text messages and missed calls and voicemails. She doesn’t need to look to know who they are all from. Livie pads back over to the kitchen island and flips the phone over, backs away from it like it might bite. She sighs again, heavier this time then glances over at her purse. Almost on instinct, she reaches for it, rummaging through all her crumpled receipts and half-used tubes of chapstick until she finds the neatly folded photo at the bottom of it. She smooths it with her fingers. It’s an old photo. From the early eighties, worn by age, the color missing from the lines where she’s folded and unfolded it year after year. He is, in the photo, the same age she is now, and as she tacks it to the fridge with a ski shop magnet, the magnitude of that settles onto her for maybe the first time.

Her sisters look like their mom. Tan skin and sandy hair. Big smiles and blue eyes. Livie has the Cousland button nose but she is, to her core, full up of that Trevelyan darkness. It skipped somehow over her older sisters. She has her father’s brooding eyes, his auburn hair. Her stepfather was a redhead. Ruddy and freckled. She’d stood out like a sore thumb in all their official family portraits. An older pain settles in her chest. She kisses her fingers then presses them to the photo. Her grief feels doubled. She tries not to imagine what her father would think of her now. Of everything that’s happened. Livie turns her back on the photo and watches as the snow continues to fall.

She isn’t surprised to get her voicemail, but when the tone beeps, she finds herself stuttering, unsure what to say. Livie punts. “Evie, hi, um…” She hesitates, drumming her nails on the counter, “I know it’s been a while, but, um, it’s me. You probably knew that.” She clears her throat. “I’m not with Howe anymore and I…just wanted you to know that, so…call me back when you get this and um…” she looks out the narrow window under the cabinets above the sink, the snow has covered it almost completely, “maybe don’t tell mom I called you. Or Orianna. I…want to tell them myself, you know.” She chews her lip. “I love you.” A beat of silence. “I love you a lot.” She ends the call and holds the phone to her chest, takes a shuddering breath. She can feel it vibrating against her palm. Message after message. Call after call. Livie closes her eyes, listens to the clock tick down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: Livie’s got a lot of notions about her own role in her abuse that do not reflect my own feelings on the matter. And these are definitely going to change as the story progresses. 
> 
> Thank so much for reading <3


	3. Chapter 3

“You’ve stopped taking your pills.”

Cullen pauses, coffee pot poised over the chipped, porcelain mug he’s pulled from the sink. The coffee smells overbrewed, maybe even burnt. He pours himself a cup anyway, leans back against the worn linoleum counter to face the woman in front of him. The old fridge chugs beside him. “Good morning, Cassandra.”

“I’m not interested in small talk, Cullen. Why have you stopped taking your pills?” Cullen takes a sip and grimaces. Definitely burnt. It goes down hard.

Cassandra is about a head and a half shorter than him, but about twice as formidable. The hard posture and wide stance that Cullen’s seen on every marine he’s ever met, even if her discharge has softened her some. Today, she’s got her closely cropped hair pulled back off her face with a thin headband, a denim smock hanging loosely over her dark leggings. She’s got eyes the color of gunmetal and they are boring a makerdamnned hole into him now. He tries to slough her off, turning to pour her a cup of coffee. “They’re out of cream,” he says, shaking a sugar packet, swirling the granules in the mug. A little coffee spills over the side. He hands it to her. “You’re gonna have to take it black.” Cassandra’s eye churn. She takes the mug but immediately sets it down on the counter behind him. Cullen swallows hard, scratching at his neck. She raises a single eyebrow. Cullen sighs. He glances over at the far door. The men’s meeting got out about ten minutes ago and a few people are still lingering outside it, chatting with the people who’ve arrived for the early bird. Like Cassandra. “What gave me away?”

Cassandra’s frown deepens. She always looks older than he knows she is, her brow always knitted. It’s what drew him to her when he first showed up at these meetings back in March, a physical representation of the tension roiling around inside of him. It had made him feel released, seeing it reflected. Today, it only makes him feel on edge. “You’re sweating like a pig.”

Cullen grimaces, raises a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Just got hot.”

They both look back at the meeting room, at the tangle of cords snaking up the short stairs. The chantry basement has never been well-insulated and the couple space heaters they set up when the blizzard first rolled through have barely kept the room warm. Most people are still bundled, Cullen shucked his coat at the door. “You don’t have to muscle through.”

“I’m not muscling through”

“You’re right. You’re not. But, like a fool, you’re trying to.” Cullen manages a chuckle. The right side of Cassandra’s mouth ticks up, but only briefly. “Are you still seeing that psychologist from the VA?”

Cullen shrugs. “Off and on.” He hasn’t been. Not for months. And she knows that. She's asking to remind him she hasn't forgotten. The man had wanted to talk about all the shit Cullen just wants to forget. He did his fourth step with Cassandra back in June and he’s done with dragging old shit up. It hadn't helped much either. He'd leave those sessions feeling shaken and hollowed out. Would sleep like shit in the days after. Cassandra fixes him with a look, like she’s reading his mind. Sometimes he’s sure she actually can. Cullen clears his throat, desperate to change the subject. “Rylen is thinking about having some people over this weekend. One of his buddies got a couple elk last weekend out in the San Juan National. Think we’re gonna throw 'em on the smoker. Saturday maybe. Are you free?”

To his surprise, Cassandra lets him deflect and scoffs. “You assume I would spend my free time with _Rylen._ ” Cullen raises an eyebrow. Cassandra huffs. “Yes, I’m free.” She pounds him softly on the chest, heading past him toward the meeting room. “Take your nalto, Cullen.” She points an accusatory finger at him. “And I’ll see you tomorrow. My house five-o-clock. We’re starting your eighth step whether you like it or not.” Cullen gives her a half salute, but she’s already heading down the carpeted steps. He shakes his head, smiling a little, and then drains his coffee, wincing as a sharp pain blooms beside his temples.

The sun comes out in the late afternoon. Cullen sees it through a slit in his blinds and sits up from his spot on the couch, folding the damp cloth he’d had over his eyes and setting it on the coffee table. The tv’s on but muted. The local weather man’s standing in front of a satellite map that looks like the red eye of the abyss. They are getting _pounded._ Going to at least. Feet and feet of snow expected this evening. The San Juan’s have had record snowfall this year and their little spot in the valley has borne the brunt of all of it. Cullen kneads his temples. The cold makes his joints hurt these days. Just like his old man. Andraste’s grace, if _that_ isn’t a nightmare. He stands, padding across the floor to the window, splitting the blinds with two fingers to find the brightest, bluest sky he’s seen since summer. He can feel the warmth of the sun through the glass on his face and leans into it. It feels good and clean and so fucking nice. A whine pulls him from his thoughts. Carroll’s looking at him from the end of the couch, doing his best dog approximation of a pout. Cullen rakes his hair back with his fingers, curls catching around his knuckles. He really needs to start gelling it again, it’s getting unruly.

Cullen always goes past the grocery store on these walks. It’s second nature now. Because Carroll loved it as a puppy. Cullen glances down at the dog by his side. He’s still a puppy, really. Big enough now to be mistaken for a full-grown dog, but still with that naughty glint in his eye. When he was really young, outside the grocery store was the only place Carroll would do business. Cullen remembers, more than once, squatting down beside the cart corral, plastic bag in hand, apologizing profusely to the store manager as Carroll laid literal waste to the parking lot. It's a habit to come here now, wander around the lot. 

Cullen got Carroll down in Denver when he was eight weeks old. He’d been abandoned by his litter, left to die in a gutter. But he’d still been a bouncy, friendly puppy in that kennel. How the hell could Cullen resist that? Two strays left in the lurch. One handling it better than the other. He’d been six months out of discharge and 30 days sober. What a mess. All around. He’s lucky Rylen let him move in, lucky the department hired him. It had all been by the Maker’s grace. He needs to remember that, kneading a sore spot at the base of his neck he tries to.

Carroll looks up at him, tongue-wagging, lets a big drop of drool drip off his jowl. “Yes, you’re very charming, Carroll. Nice work.” And then, as if to just goad him, Carroll pops squat, pissing right on the wheels of one of the carts. Cullen rubs his forehead. “Maker, really?” He sighs, hands on his hip, resigned to just wait it out. And that’s when he sees her again.

She’s hard to miss really. And Cullen tries to tell himself that’s just because she’s new even as he walks his eyes up those long legs of hers. But he doesn’t linger long on her pretty legs, because soon she stumbles and he glances up to see her arms full of grocery bags. She’d apparently abandoned her cart in the store, her arms so weighed down with bags Cullen’s sure her hands have got to be going numb. Cullen watches as she shuffles into the parking lot.

The jeans she’s in are doing her _many_ favors, but the winter coat she’s wearing looks a couple sizes too big, like she’d borrowed it from someone else. Now that he can see her straight-on, he revises his earlier assessment. She’s not cute, she’s _beautiful_. A rounded mouth with big, full lips that looked a little cracked, a little dry. High, delicate cheekbones ruddy from the cold. Her thick chestnut hair is pulled messily into a bun at the crown of her head, loose pieces falling in soft waves around her face. They glint brilliantly in the sunlight. She stumbles again and that breaks him out of his trance. He rubs his neck, shifting on his feet, willing Carroll to hurry it the fuck up. She’s dropped a couple bags on the asphalt and she stands back up, palms on her forehead. He watches her ragged exhale and nearly decides to tie Carroll’s lead to a post to go and help her, but something stops him. Maybe the look on her face. Anguish. Total anguish. Whatever is weighing on her is so heavy he can almost feel it. It paralyzes him. Cullen watches as she takes a deep breath, as she straightens up. Her eyes flutter closed for just a moment and then, apparently shored up again, she crouches down to retrieve her lost bags, hauling them over to a jeep that looks like it’s seen more than its fair share of gravel roads. He watches her shove her groceries into the trunk, watches how she exhales hard when she closes the door. A weariness passes over her face. One he knows too well. But even with that look on her face, there’s something peaceful about seeing her here in the waning light. They are suspended, the two of them, in the blue light of twilight, in the still, cold air.

And then Carroll barks. They both jump. When Cullen settles back into himself he finds her staring at him, one hand pressed hard to the back of her jeep, the other laid just above her heart. She looks, in a word, petrified. Cullen shifts, feeling suddenly like he’s on the trail, trying to soothe a scared, dangerous little animal. But he’s not, he reminds himself, he’s in the parking lot of a Natural Grocer waiting for his dog to finish taking a shit by carts. So he brushes some hair off his forehead and smiles, raising his hand in a wave. “Some weather we’re having huh.” He almost winces. Maker, that was not smooth.

She blinks at him, then, like she’s just woken up, rocks back a little. Her wave is weak and quick. He barely hears her whispered reply. “Yeah, crazy.” Then she slips around the side of the jeep. He flinches when she slams the driver's side door.

He looks down at Carroll. “Nice going.” He pats him on the head. “Really nice going.” 

Cullen’s just settled back in, frozen dinner humming in the microwave, when his phone rings. He takes a deep breath before he picks it up. “Rutherford.” He winces. Work.

“We got a 10-65 up on Williams Creek trail.”

Cullen sighs. “Good afternoon to you, Greagoir.”

“Ain’t got time for niceties, Cullen, I needed you up here ten minutes ago. We got a missing hiker.”

“Hiker?” He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose, “are the trails even open?”

“Nope. But we got some greenhorn show boater from Santa Fe trying to show his wife just what a big, bad boy he is.”

Cullen shakes his head. “Great.”

“Wife called in from the Elkwood Lodge, pretty much hysterical.”

“Hell.” Cullens already pulling on his snow pants. “You got people with her?”

“Yep. Would have you doing that if the trail wasn’t so dangerous. You're the only one I want leading up there.” Cullen just grunts. “Winds picking up and the forecast ain’t good. Figure if we’re gonna find the dude before we’re running cold we need to get a units up there fucking a s a p .”

Cullen has his phone pressed between his cheek and shoulder as he pulls onto his tactical boots. “Any idea how far he got up the trail.” 

"Yes and no. We had people scouring the trailhead and a few miles up, Nothing. Think he made it close to the summit.”

Cullen groans but his training is already kicking in. He can see the whole side of the mountain in his mind, has it already blocked it off into manageable sections. “What’s the wind speed?”

“15 but picking up. How many you think you’re gonna need?”

“Me and two of my boys will handle initial. No sense in getting a whole team up there with the weather turning.

“Well we need you and whoever else here in ten if we’re gonna get a bird up over the ridge”

“I hear ya.” Cullen glances back at his couch. He tries to shake his weariness off. “See you soon.” Cullen hangs up. For a moment, he just closes his eyes, listens to his breathing. And then he’s all movement. Hauling his overnight gear over his shoulders, checking the straps of his boots. If it’s as bad as they say, chopper might not be able to get them off the mountain until morning even if they manage to find the guy. Cullen’s got enough equipment to keep him stable as long as he hasn’t punctured something. Best case scenario, they find some rattled asshole with frostbitten fingers and toes. Worst case…well, he’ll cross that bridge if he gets to it. 

When he heads outside to his truck, the weather’s already turning. A sharp wind rolls down the street, the sky an ominous pale color. Storms smell metallic to him. Always have. Doesn’t matter what kind. Snow or rain. _Or sand._ Cullen catches his reflection in the side mirror on his pickup, does a double-take when he sees it’s not his reflection. It’s Carroll’s. Not the dog. But the man he’s named for. Cullen shuts his eyes, breathes hard through his nose. He really, _really_ does not have time for this shit, but when he opens his eyes, he still sees Carroll. His face suspended in that singular final moment before it shattered. 

His blood tasted metallic that day, like sucking on a coin. Cullen used to do that, when he was little. Suck on pennies and nickles and whatever else he could find. That’s why he’d needed braces, headgear. And that's what he’d been thinking about in that split second between when Carroll had a face and when he didn’t. When the smoke kicked up sand and the impact rocked them all back, when Cullen’s skull rattled around in his helmet. When the earth rocked forward and backward and when his training kicked in. That brutal numbness that had him reaching for his gun and not his friend. They’d shared a cigarette before the shot; it was still burning between Carroll’s stiff fingers when Cullen hit the dirt. And then the shooting started. All around them. It’s hard to remember much after that. He doesn't want to.

Cullen presses his forehead to the truck's window. It's a relief. If the day of the ambush was anything, it wasn’t cold. So he lets that cold, clean mountain air fill his lungs. He says a quiet prayer, pats the window of his truck, then looks up at the mountain, at the clouds churning at the summit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I started writing this fic as kind of a departure from the other stuff I’ve written. If you’ve read any of my other work (and if you have, wow, thank you so much!) then you know that I lay the angst on pretty heavy and I figured that this would be kind of a light, fluffy little fic for me to write. But um, it turns out I have no idea how to do that lol, so please enjoy what is turning out to be a long-form examination of two very hurt people and the peace they’ll eventually find in each other.

She finds the coat in the hall closet. Figures, by the fine embroidery detail on its soft, silken inside, that if belongs to Dorian’s mother. Maker, he’d never let her live it down if he saw her schlepping around in his mother’s old coat, looking every bit like the late seventies ski bunny she undoubtedly was. Livie doesn’t really have the charisma to pull it off, not today. And besides, it’s several sizes too big, another reminder that the past six months with Howe have whittled her down to nearly nothing. Almost erased her from the world.

But as she heads out to her jeep, still wrapped in that flimsy windbreaker that took her from Los Angles all the way here, the chill in the air hits her like a solid wall. Her breath billows out like smoke in front of her, lungs aching at the cold. She looks back at the house, decides she’ll take the coat. 

And so that’s what she’s swimming in, hands practically frozen to the steering wheel, as she drives into town. The hot air blowing from the jeep’s vents makes her already dry lips feel downright painful and she can’t really figure out the radio stations. The only one that comes in with any kind of clarity seems to be just CDOT weather alerts and road closures, interrupted only by the occasional bout of local news from the Springs. Cassandra Pentaghast’s antique shop has apparently won some kind of statewide award and the baking company across the street from the hot springs is running a special blizzard sale, buy one dozen muffins, get a half dozen free. Riveting stuff. _Keep warm people,_ the deep-voiced man on the other end of the radio warns, _some poor out of towner ended up in the loving embrace of our emergency services last night. He’s not dead but he probably wishes he was._ Livie changes the channel, wipes a little snot from her running nose on her sleeve before she remembers this isn’t her coat. She tries to remember if Dorian’s mom is the type of woman who can take a joke. Doesn’t think she is.

The other station seems to be some sort of Chantry thing. Upbeat, twangy songs about Andraste’s love that make Livie feel all kinds of skeevy. She turns the radio off, tries to pretend that the way her engine is chugging and her tires have to push hard against the snowpack isn’t freaking her out.

She can’t quite recapture the stillness she’d felt the night before, even as she settles back into driving. Something about the sunlight and the small crowds of skiers she finds loitering along the little Main Street. There’s a line of cars snaking down the freshly plowed road toward the Hot Springs. It feels, uncomfortably, like real life. Like a smaller, quieter version of Los Angeles. Like she hasn’t gone anywhere at all. Speaking of. Livie fishes for her phone in her bag, dials it with one hand as she turns up the little hill that’ll take her to what, Dorian told her at least, should be a grocery store. Leliana answers on the first ring. It shocks her so much she nearly swerves. “Oh ma Cherie, I was waiting for your call.”

Livie slows the car as she heads into the lot. The sound of Leliana’s voice has broken through any denial Livie was living in. This is real. For better or worse. “Leliana.” She parks a little further out than she means to, a little more crooked. Her voice betrays the emotion she is trying to keep at bay. “ _Hi._ ”

“Are you safe?”

Livie takes a deep, shuddering breath. She looks out the window, watches a woman with two children come out of the store. Their hands are held tightly in hers, all three are smiling. “Yeah.”

“Good. _Good.”_

Livie shifts in her seat, sitting a little higher, pressing the phone closer to her ear. She sniffles. The dry air is starting to get to her. That or she’s getting a cold. Maker, please anything but that. The thought of coughing with her ribs as fucked up as they are now, makes her frown “Um, I should be able to give you more details when-“

“You don’t have to give me more details.” Livie falls quiet.

She remembers, clearly, that morning six months ago when she’d come into the editorial office, a couple approved manuscripts tucked under her arms. There had been, to say the least, a tectonic shift in her entire life the night before, but she’d been committed to showing up to work, to pretending as though a turtleneck was a stylistic choice that anyone would make in summer in Los Angeles. And it had worked, mostly, until she’d reached across Leliana’s desk and the sleeve of her shirt rode up enough to reveal a livid, dark bruise at the base of her hand. She remembers the stillness that had fallen over them both and then, like ice cracking over a river, the way Leliana’s face had changed. The way she’d reached over and taken Livie’s fingers in the tight grip of her hand. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” She hears Leliana shift, hears the familiar sound of her acrylic nails on her keyboard. Her voice is all business when she speaks again. “We got your partial leave approved. You’ll be able to work remotely on the projects you were already on. I won’t send more your way until you give me the go-ahead, but um,” her voice softens, “there are no hard deadlines. Not for you. Take as much time as you need. We can revisit things later.”

Livie set her laptop in the house’s big study. A stately room, a little out of sync with the rest of the house’s sleeker interior. Dark woods and heavy crown molding. A brick fireplace that Livie still hasn’t quite figured out how to work. A vast, breathtaking view of the hills sloping down toward the town. She’d opened the laptop the night before, thought about trying, at least a little, to do some work. A heavy wave of fatigue hit her so hard when she tried to start that she’d barely made it up the stairs to the bedroom. “I really appreciate this.”

“It’s nothing, mon bijou. Nothing at all.” Then Livie hears Leliana hesitate on the other end of the line. “I don’t want to upset you, but…” Livie swallows hard. Her chest feels so tight it’s hard to breathe, she flexes her fingers against the steering feel. They feel numb and far away. “Howe came to the office yesterday.” It is some variation of what she expected, but she still feels like she’s been slapped.

“Oh fuck. I…Leliana, I…”

“No one at the office spoke to him but me. And I didn’t say anything.”

“Right.” She takes a deep, intentional breath, scrapes her hair from her hair “Thanks.” A long beat of silence, a dawning horror. Her voice cracks, like the air has dried it out too. “What did…what did he say?”

“He was looking for you, obviously. He said you’d gone missing. That he was worried you were in trouble.”

“ _Missing._ ” Livie sits hard back against her seat, lets her eyes close as she takes another ten count breath. Light skitters across her lap, filtered pale by the cold air. “Are you serious?”

“I told him that I didn’t know anything about that, but that if I thought you were in danger I would go immediately to the police.”

Livie can imagine it. Leliana has always been the brick wall Livie longed to be. She almost wishes she could have seen his face when that thinly veiled threat landed. _Almost._ Her fingers drift again to her neck. She’d closed her eyes when he wrapped his hands around it, like she could will him away. Like he was just a bad dream. She’d had to open them when the air ran out, when her body convulsed against him, and a panic so sharp and complete it barely felt like anything at all settled over. Her vision had narrowed to a thin point; she could only see his lips, the perfect line of his teeth. _This is the last thing_ , she thought, _the very last thing I’ll look at._ She had no idea rage could feel so melancholy. The doctors at urgent care that next morning found blood underneath her fingernails. It hadn’t been hers. She wonders if the little half-moons of her fingernails will scar on his wrists.

Livie takes another ten count breath then kills the engine on the jeep. The cold that seeps through her windows feels almost welcome. It’s clean of memories. “Thank you. _Fuck,_ thank you so much.”

“Of course, Livie.” She hears Leliana sigh. “I hope it’s beautiful where you are. You deserve that.” Livie sniffles again, this time wiping a few stray tears angrily from her cheeks. “I’ll see you when I see you alright? Take your time.”

Livie takes a long, deep breath when she steps out of the jeep. The cold, clean air feels so good in her lungs, the scent of pine lingering on her tongue. The parking lot of the grocery store is set a little up on a hill. To her right, she can see the steam rising from the hot springs, the little tops of the buildings lining Main Street. To her left, just dense pine, the barest hint of the pass that snakes through it. All around her, high mountains, peaks so tall they disappear into the clouds. They look beautiful. They look like a moat around a castle, like a high wall. She keeps the memory of her ride over the pass at the front of her mind. She barely got over it, no one else can follow. Not yet.

Livie bit off more than she could chew with the groceries. Was so overwhelmed by being in a store by herself for the first time in Maker knows how long, she’d gone a little crazy. Four pints of artisanal gelato made in Boulder, a growler of local kombucha, a blueberry pie with a sugared crust, enough fruits and vegetables to feed a whole apartment block, two steaks. Maker knows what else. Like a starving woman, like a feral child let loose in the world for the first time. She’s thankful that she’d never let Howe combine their accounts like he always wanted to. The singular thing she’d ever put her foot down on. And so, when she’d fled in the middle of the night, just that backpack slung over one shoulder, she had, at least, enough money to pave her way out.

She is, apparently, trying to pave it with sugar and fat. Livie leaves her cart at the front of the store for Maker knows what reason, and her hands go quickly numb from the heavy bags she’s hung along her arms. She muscles through most of the way across the parking long until it’s just too much, dropping her bags onto the asphalt, hauling herself up with a sigh. She scrapes her nails through her hair, puts her hands on her hips, and sighs again, heavier this time. Livie searches the lot for her jeep. It’s not that far really. She can manage, even if this is stupid.

And she does. Manage, that is. Her hands numb and elbows aching by the time she reaches the car, but she manages to heft her groceries into the back. And she’s mostly settled, talking herself down, trying not beat herself up too badly, when a dog barks, very close to her. She jumps, her heart stuttering.

Livie’s first thought, as she leans against the back of her jeep, is that he’s handsome. Tall and broad with high cheekbones and a strong chin. The kinds of things her mother used to tell her to look for. _Good breeding._ Though Livie doubts her mother would much approve of the way he’s dressed. Worn work jeans and a plaid shirt, puffy vest with _forest service_ printed just beneath a single embroidered pine. Rugged. It has an appeal.

He smiles at her as he tries to corral his exuberant dog and Livie sees that he has nice teeth and also a livid scar through one side of his lip. But she doesn’t have time to even try to figure out where a scar like that might have come from before he’s apologizing, profusely, running his free hand through his pretty, messy blonde curls. She wants to tell him it’s alright. No harm, no foul. Wants to crouch down and let his big Saint Bernard lavish her with the attention he so _clearly_ wants to give her. But that’s an old train of thought. A pre-Howe train of thought. Life has spoiled her for it.

He has an almost sweet energy despite his size, but Livie still goes rigid with panic once he takes a step toward her. And he seems to sense it, his eyes softening, mouth downturned. He raises a wide hand like he’s trying to placate her, taking two obvious steps backward. Embarrassment wars with fear inside of her. His voice is lilting. Surprisingly soft for a man his size, something approaching gentle. She doesn’t hear what he says, really, but can tell he’s trying to be friendly. And so she tries to be friendly back even as she skirts along the edge of her car out of sight. Her fingers shake as she tries to open the door and when she finally wrenches it open, she nearly collapses inside. Livie grips hard on the steering wheel, watching him in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t move for a beat or two, then runs his hands through those curls before starting down the lot with his loping saint Bernard back toward the main road. Livie exhales. She checks her back seat to make sure it’s empty, checks her phone to make sure it’s still off.

Her father taught her to cook. There was a narrow window between when she was old enough to learn and when he was gone, but Livie remembers every lesson, every minute beside him at the stove. She stopped cooking with Howe. Can’t really remember why, but as she looks out at the kitchen island, at all the groceries she’s spread across its surface, she feels, if only vaguely, full of purpose.

She’d bought food with no destination, no recipes, no meals in mind, but as she surveys it, things start to take shape. Livie glances over at the fridge, over at her father’s picture. He’s smiling from his spot on the door. Livie straightens her shoulders, takes a deep breath. She checks to make sure the side door she came in is locked then she lights the gas on the stove, watches at the blue light roars to life.

Livie calls Dorian when the sausage is browning, the sharp fennel smell of it melding with the garlic she’s already browned. The Pavus’ have beautiful cookware. Well-seasoned le Creuset pots and pans, knives so sharp they glint in the low light of the kitchen.

“So how is it,” he asks as she starts to chop up some dark greens.

“The house?”

“Of course, the house. Are you going stir crazy up there already?”

Livie smiles glancing over at the phone where it she’s laid on the counter. His voice is a little distorted now that she’s got it on speaker, but the contact picture she has for him makes her feel like he’s very close. She’d taken it long before she’d met Howe, a life that feels bisected now, faraway. A summer in Athens their senior year of college. Dorian sun-kissed and smiling. “I like it actually.”

Dorian snorts. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” Livie fishes around for a can opener in the drawers, starts in on a can of white beans when she finds it. “It’s nice. A little dusty, but,” she glances around. The storm she’d heard about in the store is hitting full force now, She can’t see past the windows, but she can hear the wind howling outside, occasionally see the window panes rattling under the force of it. The house has an almost lantern-like glow, all soft oranges and golds glinting off the teak and cherry wood. It feels warm inside as the weather lashes it, like a little cocoon. “I’m gonna give it a once over as soon as the weather improves. Open all the windows. Scrub everything.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

Livie rinses the beans in the can, gives them a quick mash with a fork, and tosses them into the pot. “You’re letting me stay here for free.”

“I’d give you the house if you’d stop being so stubborn about it”

She scoffs, still smiling. “I’m not going to let you _give_ me a house. That’s ridiculous. This belong to you.” 

“Please, my father left it to me in the will as an insult.”

“Some insult.” Livie drums her fingers on the countertop. Her chest is tight but she can’t figure out why. She’s safe and sound inside. She’s alone, quite sure of it too, spent the better part of the evening before the storm hit looking over every nook and cranny in the house, checking every window to make sure it was locked.

“Well, you know how he is.” Livie snorts. She eyes the can of beans, turning it over in her hand. She never used to use canned beans when she cooked before Howe. Always bought them dry just like her dad taught her. Would spend all her Sundays after college working off her hangovers by making a big batch of beans for the week. She could do that here couldn’t see? Livie turns to the face the kitchen, leaning back against the edge of the counter. She has nothing but time now. A kitchen meant for a whole family just for her. She can do whatever she wants in here and the freedom feels a little terrifying, a little thrilling. She drums her fingers again on the countertop, bottom lip caught in her teeth. “Are you cooking?”

She glances over at the pot. “Sausage and white bean soup.”

“Rustic.”

Livie measures out some red pepper flake in her palm and tosses it into the bubbling broth. “Yeah, well it's cold out, so.”

He sighs dramatically. “I heard. What a mess. I’ve sent you to the North Pole.” 

Livie takes the phone off speaker and presses it to her ear, tries to figure out how to say that _this_ is perhaps the best place she could be. That it is devoid entirely of anything that would remind her of Howe. That the terrible weather if a buffer. That it feels safe. But she wants to keep things light. “It’s not that bad. I’ve heard the wilderness service around here is pretty intense. I’m sure they can dig me out.”

Dorian has a bright, twinkling laugh. “Mmmh, yes I imagine those strapping men of the forest service would be more than happy to pull you out of any trouble.”

Livie scoffs but then remembers the man she’d spoken to out in the parking lot. His broad, muscular shoulders. The hay colored stubble along his strong jaw. He had soft eyes, pretty eyes almost. A stark contrast to his imposing frame. A body so different from Howe’s. A body probably more capable of violence, she reminds herself.

Dorian sighs, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Darling you know I have to ask.” She tenses, leaning over to stir her bubbling soup. “Have you gone back to a doctor?”

Livie hesitates, phone suddenly unsteady in her grip “For what?”

His heavy sigh crackles over the line. He emphasizes each word. “You know what.”

Livie stands a little rigid. She feels brittle. “They checked me out at the urgent care.” Her fingers hunt unconsciously for her tender ribs.

“I would rather _not_ have your only once over be by the overworked doctors at the Santa Monica urgent care.”

“It was fine, Dorian.” She can almost smell the antiseptic, feel the strange plasticky fabric of those gowns, the chill of the examination table on her bare shins. She’d rattled around like a coin, a feeling so inescapable, so terrible washing over her that she’d sobbed when the nurse took her blood pressure. Now, here, in Dorian’s summerhouse kitchen, she presses on that dark bruise. It reminds her of the tender skin of overripe fruit. Warm to the touch, a strange, sharp pain that feels both outside herself and deeply rooted in her own body. “I’m fine.”

She can hear his thoughts turning, a few birds calling in the distance. He’s in Napa she knows, working on a winery deal for the family business. She imagines him in a pair of short chinos and sandals, wandering off onto a teak balcony to call her, wine in hand, the sun like a simmering yolk over the rolling hills heavy with grapes. “Fine is alright. Good is better.”

Livie laughs. Her cheeks feel tight. “Okay?”

“We can talk about this. The elephant in the room.”

Livie tenses. “I know.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He sighs again. “Well, you enjoy your rustic soup and your blizzard.”

Livie glances over the pot. It smells warm and hearty, all dark greens and flecks of chili. “I will.”

“Oh of that I have no doubt.” Livie smiles into the phone. “I _love_ you.”

Livie holds the phone tightly to her ear. “I love you too.”

“Sleep good, my dear.” She keeps the phone pressed to her ear for a few beats after he hangs up, then slowly removes it. It’s heavy in her hand. Her sister still hasn’t called. But Howe has. Ten times since she turned it on after the store. Left three voicemails. She deletes them one by one. It feels exorcising a ghost each time she sees them disappear and yet that terror won’t release her. Quieter now but still heavy like a little rock in her gut. She imagines that he’s telling her that he’s coming over the pass, that he knows where she is. She imagines him pounding on the door. She imagines herself opening it. Livie shuts the phone off, slamming it almost violently onto the counter.

Her fingers are shaking as she pours herself a glass of wine. It’s a dark, bitter red, and she likes the way it tastes dry on her tongue. She glances over at the pot. Probably ten more minutes or so, the smell already filling the whole house. Livie pads barefoot across the wood floor, standing in front of one of the room's big windows. She presses her forehead to it, lets herself feel the force of the wind. When she opens her eyes, she can see a bit into the front lawn and spots a little rabbit crouched beneath one of the pine shrubs. It’s shivering, looking out at the snow, fur ruffled and matted like it’s just torn itself from the teeth of a coyote or whatever other predators lurk around these mountains. It still for a moment, the wind whipping around it, then it looks over at the window, looks right at her. Livie turns her back to the window. _That_ is a little too on the nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	5. Chapter 5

They’d spent the night on the mountain, the wind howling all around them. The steep bank where they’d found the hiker too narrow and snowpacked for them to try and make a fire. So they’d wrapped him up in mylar blankets, tried to keep him still, keep him awake. He’d been crying. A mournful, almost childlike sound. And so Cullen had soothed him like a baby, whispering soft, comforting nonsense into his ear. It had unearthed something inside of him, something old and awful. When the chopper landed around 10 am that morning, Cullen’s hands had gone completely numb, his eyelashes caked in snow and ice. He’d been silent on the way down off the mountain, silent back at the station where he’d taken a lukewarm shower and slammed a couple cups of coffee, silent all the way home. Even the radio too much noise.

The man’s in intensive care now but the doc Cullen knows at the hospital thinks he’ll probably make it, possibly minus a few fingers and toes. Which is good. For a lot of reasons but chiefly because that night of crying rattled something inside of him. Cullen had been the one to hold him, to try and keep him still, calm. And the man’s wailing, terrified cries made Cullen want to cry too. To cry and pout and be held in a way he wasn’t sure he’d felt since Afghanistan, maybe since the first night in that hotel back home in Kansas. When he’d been fifteen miles from his parent’s old farm and two from their gravestones. When he hadn’t yet told anyone about his discharge and so his phone lay dead and silent. He feels bottomless sitting now on the front step of his house, nursing a weak, watery cup of coffee. So even though he hasn’t slept a wink, he doesn’t try to.

The walk is helping. Especially since he left Carrol at home. He can wander, zone out. And the weather’s warm enough for him to. The sky a brilliant blue above him, just the faintest chill on the wind. The plows have cut through the ice and snow and the sidewalks are mostly shoveled. He’s meandering a little, slows to a stop to watch the steam rising from the pools across the river at the hot spring. The faint scent of sulfur lingers on the wind. It’s been a while since he's had a soak and as he tries to work out a particularly sore spot in his shoulder, he thinks it might be overdue. But for now, he just wants a good cup of coffee he hasn’t had to brew himself and something sweet. So he’s headed, basically on autopilot, toward the grocery store. He always somehow ends up there. At least five times a week which is pretty makerdamned high for a man who can’t cook to save his life and lives on either frozen meals or whatever they’ve got cooking at the station. But it’s a good walk. Scenic. Not too far. If a headache sets in or the trembling starts he can make it back home before it becomes debilitating. And it’s soothing to wander the aisles. Something almost meditative about the way it's organized. Most everything in its place. 

And so he’s feeling relatively chilled out when he steps out into the parking lot only to find her lingering out in the parking lot. It’s still early afternoon, less lonesome than the darkening evening when he’d seen her last, but there’s still something hanging off her that makes him pause. Recognition maybe. A sadness in her echoing a sadness in him. He’s probably projecting, doesn’t know if that’s worse or better than just checking her out.

Cullen watches her stop at the back of her jeep and sigh. She’s got a lot of heavy shit in her cart, he can see that even from far away, and before he even really thinks it through he’s making his way toward her. She catches sight of him when he’s only a few feet away and honest to the maker yelps like a wounded little animal. Cullen stops, holding his hands up. The sound scared him as much as his presence seems to have scared her. They both look a little embarrassed once they exhale, but Cullen can feel the anxiety wafting off of her. “Sorry, I just um, I just thought you might…," he scratches at his neck, "need some help with your groceries.” She hesitates. Too long. Too long for it to be something benign and he gets that itch at the back of his neck that he sometimes does up on the mountain, when a situation is about to turn, when he needs to keep his eyes and ears open. “Sorry,” he says, this time steadier. His fingers tangle in his curls.

She shakes her head, tucking some of that dark hair behind her ears, then looks back up at him. “It’s fine. I just didn’t…” Her fingers waver at her temples. He watches them tremble, watches her clasp her hands together at her chest to try to get them to stop.

Cullen clears his throat, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I probably shouldn’t sneak up like that.”

The corners of her mouth twitch up, just for a second. “Probably not.”

He smiles. She’s still in that ill-fitting coat, those _incredible_ jeans, but she looks a little less worn out than she had the day before. Like she’d gotten a good, long sleep. Her cheeks are a flash of scrubbed, chilly red and her lips look even more cracked than they had the day before. Probably still getting used to all this cold, dry air. He wonders where she’s from. Cullen clears his throat, trying to keep his cool. He’s got butterflies in his stomach, cannot remember the last time he’d felt something like that. Guilt churns at the base of them. For being alive. For feeling anything at all. He clears his throat again. “I saw you here yesterday, I think.” He scratches nervously at his neck. “ I was the one with-“

“The dog.” He watches her flinch. “Sorry, I-“

“You don’t have to be-“

“Right.”

“Okay.” They say in unison. 

She chews a little at her bottom lip, glancing around the parking lot. A young mother with a couple of kids piles out of Prius and the sight seems to settle her a little. “Cute dog.”

Cullen chuckles, “yeah he gets that a lot. Little celebrity around town.”

“Oh yeah?” Cullen smiles, rocking his head back and forth. She smiles a little wistfully then sighs, looking down at her cart. “I…could probably use some help with these.”

He rocks a little on his heels, trying to look casual. “Sure thing.”

He’s about halfway through her cart when he stops to really admire the sheer magnitude of shit she’s got in it. He puts his hands on his hips and chuckles. “You must have an army to feed.”

“Nope,” she says, hefting a case of seltzer water into the back of her jeep, “ just me.” He watches as she stills, as fear passes quickly over her. She opens her mouth like she wants to correct herself, take back but she’s just said. Her lips tremble and then she slams her mouth shut, smiling nervously at him. He returns it with a smile of his own. He figures that’s probably smart, not to tell the whole world that she’s living out here alone, but something about it hits him as a little off. He wants to tell her he isn’t a bad guy, that she doesn’t need to worry about him following her home or something equally awful, but can’t quite figure out a way to tell her that without immediately sounding like a complete scumbag. So instead he just keeps piling groceries into her trunk, making small talk about the weather, about the pass. He’s halfway through recounting some bland story he heard on the radio about ski lifts when the weight of one of her bags takes him by surprise. He levels himself, hefting it up onto the jeep’s bumper, and glances inside. It’s an enormous linen bag of dried great northern beans. “I didn’t even know you could buy beans like that.” He looks up at her. “Like not in a can.

She has a pretty laugh. “You mean dry?” He just shakes his head. Her smile is pretty too. “They’re better that way.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they taste a lot better actually. They’re um…” She wavers, face falling again, just a little, “not that hard to cook really. Just a little more time on the front end." 

“Huh.” He smiles at her. “That’s good to know.”

Her laugh is a little nervous now. “Yeah, guess so.” She tugs at the scarf around her neck like it’s too tight.

“So did you just move here?” He sees that fear pass over her eyes again and tries to loosen his shoulders a little, make himself less imposing. “I just um, I’ve seen you a couple times. And um,” he nods toward the store, “most tourists don’t shop here.”

She glances back at the store then back at him. “Oh.”

He doesn’t know why he’s still talking. His mouth just keeps going even as his collar has started to burn, the start of a livid blush crawling up his neck. “So are you a hiker or?”

She lets out a nervous little laugh. “No, no. Definitely not.” He laughs too, even as he feels his cheeks burning. "I'm, um, staying at my friend's summer house up on the ridge. Looking after it, I guess." 

"Oh, that's great." 

"Yeah." 

"Any idea how long you'll be in town?" 

She shakes her head. Her eyes have gone a little blank. "Uh, no. Not really." She has her arms around herself, like she's trying to covertly hold herself together. "A while, I think. Few months, at least."

"Well, then I guess I'll probably see you around." 

He watches her fingers flex against her coat and regrets saying it. But she smiles and this one seems a little brighter than the last. "I guess you will." 

They pile the last of her groceries into her trunk. Cullen steps back, wiping his hands on his jeans before extending one. “I’m Cullen, by the way.”

She hesitates but then takes it. The firmness of her handshake surprises him. “Livie.” She pulls her hand quickly away. Her fingers leave a chill on his palm. “Thanks for, um, for helping me.”

“It’s no problem.” And he means it, that guilt still curling in his gut and something else, something lighter. 

The game’s on. Most of Rylen’s buddies are gathered around the tv, sitting on the arms of the couch, around the back. Broncos versus Raiders and, if the groaning and shouting is any indication, the Broncos are getting their ass kicked.

Cullen can take or leave football and another headache started building as he walked home from the store. Just a quiet one, but he’s not looking to take any chances, so he’s tucked himself back by the kitchen, surveying the house from up against the far wall. Carroll has the same idea, laying under the snack table, just the tip of his nose peeking out from under. Cullen smiles at the sight, dropping a chip surreptitiously onto the floor in front of him. Carroll sniffs it out, snapping it up like a crocodile and disappearing again under the table.

“Nasty habit.” Cullen straightens up on instinct. At attention. It’s Cassandra’s voice. She’s never lost that Colonel lilt. Cullen wonders if he still sounds like a Captain. If he still strikes that stern visage. Probably not. He fusses with the collar of his plaid shirt. _Hopefully_ not. “He’ll get fat if you keep feeding him snacks.”

“He’s a saint Bernard, he’s already fat.” She rolls her eyes, hands him a plate of pie, a scoop of ice cream melting steadily on the crust. “Speaking of fattening up.”

She settles beside him, back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. “Please, I heard about your night on the mountain.” She gives him a once over. “If anything you probably haven’t eaten enough today.”

Cullen licks vanilla ice cream off the side of the fork. “One day we’ll have to get you out there. You can show us how it’s done.”

She scoffs. “I’m retired. Now eat.”

Cullen chuckles to himself before digging into the pie. It’s mixed berry. Tart and sweet, the sugared crust cracking against his teeth. “Maker, who made this?”

“I did.”

Cullen looks incredulously over at her. “You made this pie?”

She makes a disgusted noise in her throat. “Try not to sound so shocked.”

He takes another bite. “Come on, this is store-bought.” He swirls up some ice cream, licking the end of the fork.

“I can bake. ” He cocks his head at her, eyebrow raised. “Alright, fine, but don’t tell Rylen. I’ll never hear the end of it.” Cullen laughs, a deep-throated chuckle. He hears the backdoor open, watches as Rylen slips inside, kicking snow off his boots. The rich smell of roasting meat wafts inside. This late in the season, the elk will probably be game-y, but Rylen’s got an elk meatball recipe that is out of this world so the leftovers will be put to good use. Cullen’s stomach growls just thinking about it. Rylen nods at him, Cullen nods back before Rylen turns his attention to the new potatoes boiling on the stove.

One of Rylen’s friends wanders over, head shaking. He crouches down to fish a couple beers out of the cooler then, glancing up at Cullen, looks almost sheepish. He mutters a quiet apology before tucking the beer under his arm. Cullen stiffens, taking another bite of pie. “When do you stop getting treated like a sideshow freak?”

Cassandra raises an eyebrow. Cullen nods toward the cooler. “Ah. Never.” He groans. “You’re new in sobriety, Cullen. People will stop handling you with kid gloves after a year or two.”

He grunts. “A year or two. That’s fantastic.”

She looks sidelong at him. “You know alcohol has never been your problem. You’re in NA, not AA. If you want, you could-“

Carroll’s face flashes through his mind, smiling, tipping a beer back between his lips, playing cards spread between them in the sand. “No mind-altering substances. I’m not trying to complicate my sobriety.” She fixes him with a look. “I’m not being touchy.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You didn’t have to.” A rare smile flickers across her lips.

She cracks open a can of seltzer and glances over at the tv. The ads are over now, Rylen’s buddies back and transfixed. “This game is terrible.”

“Yep.”

“So,” she takes another sip, “what’s new?”

He raises an eyebrow, smirking a little. “Are you trying to make small talk with me, Cassandra Pentaghast?”

She bristles, clearly ruffled. “Isn’t that what people do at parties like these?“

He finishes off the pie, laughing quietly. “Yes, this is, typically, what people do at parties.” He sets the empty plate down on the snack table, watches as Carroll’s tail brushes out from under the tablecloth like a little scout, feeling for food. “What’s new actually is, um, I met a girl today.” Cassandra raises an eyebrow. “Or, I don’t know, maybe meet isn’t the right word. I’d seen her before, we just, um, talked for the first time today.”

I don’t think I have ever heard you talk about a girl before.”

“I mean it’s not like…”

“I know. Must be worth mentioning though.”

Cullen shrugs. “She’s new in town. Staying for a few months at least.”

“Are you going to ask her out?”

He swallows hard. “Maker's Breath. No, _no_ , I mean, I would never…you know I don’t even know why I brought her up.” Cullen’s hands are shaking again, just the slightest tremble. He remembers the way Livie’s fingers shook as she brushed her hair from her face.

“Huh,” Cassandra takes another sip of her seltzer, “she must be really special to get your attention.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick warning that there are more explicit descriptions of domestic violence in this chapter and the tags have changed some.

The bedroom is all windows. Three walls of them rimmed with dark wood. It’s sort of small for a master bedroom, a little Avant Garde, with the enormous bed taking up most of the space, only a single wooden side table beside it. Her first night in the house, Livie found a 1986 copy of _His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage_ in one of the drawers like the most depressing, domestic hell version of the _Chant of Light_ you find in every hotel. Tangible proof of the slow, crawling dissolution of the Pavus’ marriage. Another thing she hadn’t really been around for, another thing she’d been too thoroughly entrenched in Howe’s world to reach out and bear witness with Dorian. Livie reaches out from her spot on the bed and runs her nails along the whorled, polished wood of the side table, her phone pressed to her ear.

Aside from the table, and a southwestern patterned rug on the hardwood, there’s no other furniture in the room. The closet and bathroom are on the same side as the hallway entrance, giving the room a sort of anchored feeling, the rest of it so light and bright it feels almost outside, like its secured to the side of a mountain. The effect, with craggy mountains and the tips of the dense pine forest spreading out in all directions beyond the glass, is a little like a fish bowl. Or a tree house. Or a snow globe. And Livie likes the way it makes her feel. Protected. Singular. A sort of captivating aloneness that she’s not sure she’s ever felt. Certainly not in LA, definitely not on her family’s estate near Palo Alto. From here, with the central heat blasting through the house, she can survey the weather, the softly falling snow and whistling wind. Like a little bird perched at the top of a tree.

She likes especially that the windows face the steep, winding front drive. If he came for her, she’d know. And maybe there wouldn’t be anything she could do about it, but at least she’d know. It’s a sort of sick thought and she pulls the bed’s knit blanket up over her shoulders. He feels close by, like he could reach out and touch her. And it’s when that familiar chill rolls over her, like fingers inching up her skin, that Livie realizes that Dorian has been talking for probably ten straight minutes and Livie hasn’t heard a single word. “Are you listening to me?” He says, like he’s heard her snap suddenly to attention.

“Of course.”

“What was I talking about?” She flips onto her back, her bare legs brushing against the soft duvet. It feels luxurious to be bare like this, just in a t-shirt and underwear. No need to hide, no need to curl tightly in on herself. Maker, there had been so much hiding in those last months with Howe. Long sleeves and high collars. So much curling inward, fingers at her temples, trying not to flinch, body rigid to protect itself. Instincts she shouldn’t have had to use. Livie lays back against the pillow, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the pine boughs brushing the windows on the force of the wind. She bends her legs, pushing the blanket off them and examines her knees. She’d crawled across the floor that last night and the bruises are still livid on her skin. A mottle of purples and blues almost black fading softly to yellow. She runs her fingers along them. Soothing them with her fingertips. Her body is a timid animal. All tightly coiled fear, still and watchful. Her body doesn’t know it’s safe. Livie tries to convince it even though parts of her, deep down, don’t feel safe either. She stretches her legs out, rubbing them against the soft cotton of the duvet. That panic is still lodged quietly in her chest, that pulsing dread, but it is quieter now. At least for the moment. She hears Dorian tsk over the phone. “What was I talking about of dear friend of mine?”

Livie closes her eyes, lets herself smile. “I have no idea.”

She hears him chuckle over the line. “Oh, my dear, you are truly something else. A _gift._ ” Her chest constricts. She fights the sudden urge to cry, to tell him that she is so sorry, _so sorry,_ that she spent the last year screening his calls, hiding from him. Knowing, just _knowing,_ that if he got one look at her, heard her voice at all, he’d know. And then she’d have to face herself. Face all of it. “Oh my darling, what could possibly be occupying your thoughts so thoroughly?”

Livie smiles, laughing lightly. She flips over in the bed, head resting on her hands, wincing a little when she rolls over her ribs. She isn’t sure what compels her to say what she says next. “I met a guy yesterday. Forest service, I think. Handsome.”

A beat of silence and Livie wishes she could take it all back. She can almost hear Dorian’s mind turning over what she’s said. And she figures that’s fair, because if she’s proven anything in the past few years it’s that she cannot be trusted, especially with men.

But Dorian recovers quickly, just like he always has. “My, my. Only a week in her new home and the lovely Miss Trevelyan already has a suitor.”

Livie sits up and laughs. They are playing a dangerous game, edging close to lines neither of them wants to cross. But it’s nice to be teased, to laugh, like they always used to. “Andraste’s tits. Don’t be ridiculous!”

“You know what they say about getting over.”

“Oh Maker, Dorian do not-“

“Gotta get under.”

“Maker!” Livie lays back down, lets her free arm rest above her head on the pillow. Just the idea of fucking makes every muscle in her body ache. She trails her hand down between her legs, just holds it there, like she can seal her body shut. She hadn’t let them give her a pelvic exam at the urgent care. That would have been too much, too real. But Howe had left her with a brutal parting gift. A memory so seared into her brain that even now she flinches, remembering how even just a day ago she’d found a tiny pink stain at the center of her underwear.

“So, what’s he like?”

Livie sighs, moving her hand over to the skin of her chilled thigh. “I have no idea. I’ve met him once.” She worries her lip with her teeth, remembering the low rumble of his laugh, the sun in his golden hair. “Handsome and…sweet, I don’t know.”

“Handsome and sweet sound like _exactly_ what you need.”

Livie laughs. “What I _need_ is to never let another man touch me ever again.”

“Livie!”

“I’m serious.”

“ _Olivianne._ ”

Livie looks over out the window, at the snow softly drifting past the glass onto the tall pine boughs. She lets her free hand fall onto the bed toward the snow, fingers flexing. The simple pleasure of a limp body, of a quiet body. She closes her eyes and lets herself imagine a life where she would smile easily back at the man who’d helped her with her groceries. Where she might reach out and brush her hand against his. She takes a deep breath and lets her eyes flutter shut. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this.”

She hears Dorian take a sharp breath. It’s not fair, she knows. What is he supposed to say to that? He just says her name. And the sound of it, in his voice, in the quiet solitude of this house, uncoils some of the terror in her chest. “I love you,” he says. And she says it back.

“You’re gonna have to share a table.”

Livie blinks up at the woman, credit card hanging in the air between her fingers. She glances back at the line behind her. Mostly skiers. She can tell by their snow pants and their goggle sunburns. Dorian recommended this place, called it quaint. And it is. Cozy too. Wooden walls covered in vintage skies and snowshoes, license plates, and old photos, mismatched cloth curtains on the windows. The place smells like soft flour and baking bread, brewing coffee and bubbling fruit compote. She looks back at the young woman behind the counter. “What?”

The woman smiles, her little gold nose ring twinkling in the filtered light. “Sorry. It’s a busy morning. You’re either gonna have to take it to go or share a table.”

“Oh, um…” Livie blinks quickly, trying not to be thrown completely by something as simple as this. But her stomach is growling and the idea of climbing back up that steep drive, eating alone at her kitchen table, makes her feel a little chilled.

“Livie!” She nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of her name, whirling around to find the source of the noise. Cullen is sitting at the table closest to the door, his back to the window. “Hey!” He waves, then hesitates when she stiffens, waving a little softer. He’s got a half-eaten sandwich in one hand. Dressed in the same plaid shirt and puffy forest service vest as she’d seen the day before, but his blonde curls are a little less unruly today, slicked back away from his face. “You can sit with me.”

The cashier cocks her head. “That work?”

Livie turns back to look at her. She swallows hard. “Um, yeah, sure okay.” The cashier smiles, handing her a little number placard. The line is starting to get restless behind her. She heads over to his table, trying to ignore the almost childlike terror that has settled inside of her.

Livie settles into the rickety chair across from him, watching as he sets his sandwich back on his plate. Tuna. With chips. Livie’s stomach rumbles. Howe hated tuna. Hated the smell, the taste. Wouldn’t let her keep it in the house. Livie’s dad used to make tuna sandwiches for lunch in the summertime. Sometimes it would just be the two of them, sitting on the back veranda, watching as bees bobbed lazily by. The tumult of memories are making her feel a little nauseous. Her eyes flit up to Cullen’s face. His smile’s a little shy, a little sheepish. She can tell, by the way he’s looking at her, that she needs to be the one who talks first.“We keep running into each other.”

Cullen chuckles, taking another bite of his sandwich. He’s got a little mustard on his lip, wipes at it with his thumb. “Sure seem to.” He scratches at his neck, she watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “It’s a small town.” Cullen nods toward his plate. “I can take the rest of this to go if you want to eat by yourself.”

“No, no that’s okay.” Her hands fidget in her lap. “Thank you.”

“It’s really no problem.” He smiles with one side of his mouth and Livie gets a better look at that scar. It’s deep, looks like the wound would have cut his lip wide open. She wonders where he got it, fingers ghosting over her still tender ribs.

She got the chicken salad sandwich. White meat flecked with dried cranberries and bits of celery on two thick slices of dark, seeded bread. It tastes like heaven. She washes it down between bites with a thick, golden curried soup dense with lentils and chickpeas, warming all down to her stomach. “This is really great,” she says, nearly on a moan, glancing up at Cullen, “is the food here always this good?”

He smiles. He finished his sandwich and chips a while ago, but went back up to the counter to get a couple muffins that he’s been working his way through between bits of small talk. “Pretty much, yeah. I’m no connoisseur, but I’ve never had a bad meal here.”

There’s something about this whole thing that makes Livie feel a little daring. Maybe it’s the way everyone seems to know Cullen, greeting him as they come in through the front door, trying to shake the chill off their backs. A few of them clapped him on the shoulder, one older woman ruffled his hair, and his livid blush made Livie feel, in inches, a little more settled. Or maybe it’s the freshly baked loaves an aproned woman with neon hair brought out a few minutes ago, still steaming in their display cases, smelling of fresh rosemary and cherries. Or maybe it’s just that she’s full, that she’s gotten some good sleep for the first time in, Maker, maybe a whole year. So she raises an eyebrow, voice a little teasing. “Where have you had a bad meal?”

He chuckles, leaning in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, you can’t get a decent slice of pizza in this town to save your life.” Livie giggles, a sound so foreign to her own ears that it shocks her a little back. She hesitates. This feels, in a word, dangerous. Though she isn’t entirely sure why. She feels like a liar. Though she hasn’t said anything to him that isn’t true. Her fingers ghost again to her ribs. No, she understands now what she’s feeling. Fear again. Like she’s courting something awful. Like the light, easy feeling in her chest is a dare to the universe. A challenge. She feels her shoulders tense up, feels helpless to stop them. If Cullen notices the change in her, he doesn’t show it, taking another big mouthful of muffin, smiling sheepishly as he wipes some crumbs from his lips. “So, you get those beans squared away?” She frowns. Her thoughts are careening so quickly around in her head that she can’t see any of them straight. He clears his throat, shifting a little in his seat. “The uh the ones you bought yesterday.”

“Oh,” she sits up a little straighter. Her brain slows quietly to a stop, her thoughts drifting back down to earth. The afternoon sun filters in through the cloth curtains behind him, making his hair shimmer almost gold. It’s warm on her skin. “Yeah. Planning on doing something with them tonight. I’ve got them soaking now.”

“Soaking?”

“Yeah,” she says on a laugh, “it’s kind of process.” Livie takes a deep, long breath. She counts all the miles between her and Los Angles, reminds herself that no one would try to hurt her in a public place like this and that she’s locked all the doors and windows back at the house. A house where no one knows she is. Except Dorian who would probably take that particular secret to his grave. Except Cullen who is looking at her now, eyes soft as a puppy dog. She brushes some hair back behind her ears. “Maybe you can help me, actually. Since you’re local.”

He sits up a little straighter. “Sure, of course.”

“Oh it’s nothing big. I’m just looking for a place I can buy parmesan rinds. The woman behind the dairy counter at the Natural Grocer didn’t have much for me.”

“Parmesan rinds? Like the ends of cheese? Don’t you throw those away?”

Livie laughs, a little nervously now, brushing her hair again behind her ears. “You can make a really good broth with them.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah, incredible, actually. Very salty.” She swallows a little hard. “It’s good with the beans.” He smiles, like they’ve got some unfunny inside joke between them now. “I’m trying to make a soup.” Livie fidgets a little in her seat. Howe used to tell her to keep things short, that, unchecked, she’d just drone on and on, long past the point of interest for anyone listening. But Cullen doesn’t really seem to be getting bored, that or he’s very polite. Maybe it’s just the tempo of the town. The days seem to slink by slower, even in the dead of winter.

“Are you a chef?”

Livie laughs. “Oh maker, no, but I’ll take the compliment.” Cullen smiles. She can see a blush working its way up his neck, watches as he takes another big bite of his muffin, notices, for the first time, that his fingers are shaking, just a little. She decides to do him the same favor he’s been doing her and ignores it. Besides, the sun has shifted again, this time illuminating the sharp lines of his jaw. There’s a sweetness about him, a softness that cuts straight through his rugged, somewhat gruff exterior. It’s his eyes, she decides, that make him look so gentle despite being a mountain of a man. A molten color, observant and sparkling. It makes it easy to talk to him “No, I work in publishing.” Livie winces. “ _Worked_ in publishing. Or well, still do, I guess. I’m…” She straightens up, “I still work in publishing.”

It’s a small mercy that he doesn’t comment on her hesitation. “Oh interesting. For books?” That blush races from his neck straight to his cheeks. “I-I mean, of course for books. Sorry that was-“

“No, no. There’s lots of different kinds of publishing. Not just books.” She smiles, feels a little warm when he smiles back. “But I work in fiction, so, mostly books for me.” It feels strange to talk about work. She almost never did it with Howe. It was another minefield. Perhaps the vastest. His moods had always been mercurial. That had been one of the things that had drawn her to him when they met at a press event almost three years ago now. Slender and ostentatious, dressed in a sleek suit, a gold watch on his wrist. His moodiness had been the only thing that set him apart from the sea of rich men that attended these kinds of things. He’d been the sort of dark-haired, well-bred man her mother had trained her for years to try and find. She’d normally been so resistant to anyone like that, but he’d bought her a drink and made a comment about how absolutely dull events like these were. There’d been something about that display of raw ennui that had gotten her interest. His moodiness made him an easy tyrant and there’d been something about her work, just the existence of it, it seemed sometimes, that would set him off, especially in that last, long year. One night she’d come home a little late after another book fair event, mentioned off-hand that one of her colleagues bought her a drink, laughed a little about how bitter the alcohol had been. He’d dragged her by her hair to the bathroom. The kind of untamed, overflowing violence she’d been sure, until that moment, existed only in movies. Livie reaches unconsciously to the crown of her head.

Cullen’s still looking at her, but he’s a little further back now than he was a few moments ago, leaning against the window. His eyes are even softer. “Sounds exciting. I don’t really know anything about it, to be totally honest.”

Her laugh is a little self-conscious as she lays her hand back in her lap. She doesn’t feel wholly settled, like her memories are just bubbling under the surface. She takes a quiet sip of coffee, tries not to worry about the way her throat is so tight it’s hard to swallow. “It’s really not all that interesting.”

“No?”

“No, mostly a lot of paperwork.”

Cullen chuckles. “I can relate to that.”

She smiles at him, it feels easier this time. “So what about you?” She nods at his vest. “Are you actually forest service or did you pick up that vest at goodwill?”

Cullen knits his brows for a moment then glances down at himself, chuckling. “Ah, no I’m uh the real deal I guess.”

“I don’t have even the faintest idea what a job like that would entail.”

“Well I’m an EMT.” Livie stiffens. She can feel the nurse’s cold hands on her ribs, the metal of the examination freezing against the backs of her thighs. But the memory doesn’t linger and Livie finds herself looking down at Cullen’s hands. He’s got neatly trimmed nails, but she can see big callouses on his palm. A man who works. A man who uses his hands. They’re big like the rest of him and she imagines they might be warm. Livie shakes her head. She’s being a silly little girl. She’s being _dangerousl_ y naïve and that’s what got her into trouble in the first place. That’s what brought her here. She looks back at up at him. “Wow, that’s important work.” Now it’s his turn to flinch.

The weather’s turning a little as the two of them leave the café. The blue, blue sky now filling with clouds, the breeze a little harsher and a little colder than it had been that morning. Livie’s about to try and make a graceful exit, a suddenly intense desire to see him again rising uncomfortably up inside of her, when she spots the man from the pass coming down the sidewalk. If it hadn’t been for the tattoos, she might not have recognized him. He’s got a thick head of ruddy, gingery hair that had been tucked into his hat the night on the pass, but the same tattoos and the same mischievous grin. Once he catches sight of her, he makes a beeline for her. She fights the urge to duck behind Cullen, the speed in his steps reminding her uncomfortably of something else. But he’s laughing as he slips over the little fence outside the café and she lets her shoulders relax.

He’s about a foot shorter than Cullen and much narrower, but when he gets close enough, he shoves Cullen playfully on the shoulder, reaching up to try and muss some of his hair. Cullen bats him away like a bored hound. He looks over at Livie, eyes twinkling, and winks. “Hey, you’re alive.”

Livie’s laugh comes out a little breathy. “Mostly, yeah.”

Cullen looks between them, brow knitted. “You know each other?”

“She’s the girl I plucked off the pass.”

Cullen cocks his head at her. “Huh. You don’t say.”

Livie shrugs. “It wasn’t that big of a deal, I mean…”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Rylen chuckles. “We haven’t been properly introduced though.”

Cullen clears his throat. “Well then, Livie this is Jack Rylen. My roommate” He glances back at him. “Occasional coworker. Rylen, Livie.”

“Only my mother calls me Jack.”

Cullen scoffs, playful smile on his lips. He looks knowingly back at Livie. “Only his mother calls him Jack.”

Livie fights a smile, “noted. Nice to see you again, Rylen.”

Rylen bends a little in a mock bow. “And it’s _nice_ to see you. Well, I won’t interrupt this little love fest any more than I already have.” He hops back over the fence, heading down the sidewalk. He calls over his shoulder “Sorry for crashing your date!”

They look at each other. both of them livid red. “It’s not a…” Cullen reaches up to scratch at his neck, “not a date. I mean, it’s not that I wouldn’t, wouldn’t uh, wow, uh okay. This is not…”

“Yeah, no, I know. Not a date. I know.” They both have their hands in their pockets, both kicking up snow with their boots.

Cullen speaks first, clearing his throat. “Anyway, it was nice having lunch with you.”

Livie smiles. “Yeah, yeah thank you for uh sharing your table.”

He brushes her off. “Ah, it’s nothing. It’s communal in there anyway. Hippy dippy shit, you know.” Livie smiles, laughing a little. Cullen straightens up some, his voice a little more serious. “Now it’s none of my business but…” Livie swallows hard, her heart suddenly beating quick in her chest. “Are you all set up at your place? Good insulation, pipes all good? You got your heat handled?” Livie exhales. How idiotic was she to think that this man she’s just met in a town she’s been in for less than a week would be asking about her ex? “I only ask because we’ve got another big storm rolling in overnight.”

“Maker. I hadn’t heard. Are the winters normally this bad here?”

He rocks his head back and forth. “Yes and no. This is shaping up to be a pretty rough one.”

Livies rakes her fingers through her hair. “Maker, alright. Thank you for telling me. I’m not…all that handy. I’m sure that’s not really surprising. I don’t really know if…all that is handled.”

“If you came into town on the heels of the last blizzard, you’d know by now if it wasn’t.”

“Oh.” She exhales. “Okay, good.”

“But um,” he extends his hand. “I can put my number in your phone if you want. You can call me if you have any problems.”

“Oh!”

His fingers twitch back toward his palm. “I mean you don’t have to.”

“No, I uh,” Livie fishes for her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She opens it, brushing aside her notifications. Two new voicemails. Six missed called. Ten messages. The tempo is, at the very least, slowing down. She hands it to him. “Thank you. I really appreciate that.” 

That blush has started to crawl back up his neck. “It’s really no problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	7. Chapter 7

“So, how’s the store?” Cullen takes a quick sip of coffee, wincing when it burns the roof of his mouth.

Cassandra looks at him over the top of her reading glasses. “You’re stalling.”

Cullen leans back a little in his chair, runs a finger over the lip of his mug. Outside, a soft snow is falling. The temperature’s been dropping all morning, but the little thermometer Rylan hung outside the kitchen window broke after the last big storm. It’s hung just under freezing ever since. “No.” Cullen takes another sip of coffee. “Not stalling. I just…” A twinge of pain rockets behind his eyes, but he tries to hide his wince. “I just heard over the radio that the store-“

“Stop stalling. We’ll be here all day.”

Cullen shifts in his seat. It feels suddenly too small for him, like his body has outgrown it. He scratches at his neck. “Can we talk about Mia again?”

“You’ve done an eighth step on Mia already. You’ve done eighth steps for your entire family, Cullen.”

He squirms. “I just think it might be useful if we revisited-“

“Cullen.” He snaps to attention. Behind them, Rylen turns off the tv. Cullen hears him groan as he gets off the couch onto his feet. The steps creak as he heads upstairs and then the house falls quiet. The clock in the front room ticks loudly, branches rap against the windowpanes, disturbed by the wind. Cassandra nods toward the notepad in front of him. He’s been doodling on it, big dark marks where he’s let the pen sit for too long. “Shall we?”

“He’s dead.” It comes out of nowhere, from some deep, abandoned part of him. Cassandra raises an eyebrow. “He’s dead, Cassandra. He doesn’t care about my amends.”

“We’ve done eighth steps for both your parents. Who are, if you recall, also dead.”

“That’s-“

“These amends are also for you.”

“That’s different.” Carroll looks up from his spot beside the table, eyeing Cassandra then Cullen. He settles back down, but keeps his eyes open, watching them carefully.

Cassandra ignores him, opening up the Big Book. “These amends, Cullen,” she fixes him with a hard look, “are also for you.”

The wind’s stopped when Cullen heads out onto the front porch, the snow too, but the temperature is still plummeting, and he wraps his woolen scarf tighter around his neck and face. He rakes his fingers through his hair, curls tangling around his knuckles, some of them still stiff with gel. Cassandra left a few minutes ago. He’d feigned a headache, convincing no one, but Cassandra had finally relented. _We’re finishing the eighth step next week, Cullen, and that’s final._ She’d said, pulling on her coat and gloves.

What he hasn’t told her, what he’ll probably never tell her, is that he’s already written Carroll a letter. Or part of one at least. It had been at the suggestion of his first VA therapist and Cullen had been so desperate then that he’d barely questioned it. So, he’d sat hunched over a desk too small for him in a dingy Kansas Motel 8, and tried to write a letter to his oldest, dearest, deadest friend. He didn’t get very far. Couldn’t decide if he should start it _Dear Carroll_ or _Hey man_ and in those long, endless days after his discharge decisions like that seems unfathomable. Impossible. He ate the same gas station sandwich breakfast, lunch, and dinner for an entire month because the idea of trying to figure out something else to eat completely overwhelmed him. He created his own structure, imprisoned himself inside it. And maybe that was why he never got further into the letter. Or maybe it was the exercise itself. The whole point of the letter was, as the therapist told it, that he was never supposed to send it. So he could speak freely. But Carroll always let Cullen speak freely and that fact that Cullen couldn’t send it was the whole makerdamned problem.

Carroll was the letter writer anyway. Used to wake up long before dawn to write to his mother. Whole novels. Cullen used to tease him about it, but in the end, he’d brought a stack of those letters, the ones Carroll didn’t ever get the chance to send, to North Carolina like a man on a pilgrimage.

He’d gone all that way, six months almost to the day after Carroll died, to give them to a petite, dark-haired woman who Cullen had seen only in pictures, in grainy flashes in the background over skype. They’d sat across a wooden picnic table from each other, picking at vinegary bbq, taking long sips of sweet tea to fill the silence. The summer heat sweltering, the air thick and humid. He’d wanted to tell her how sorry he was, how unbelievably fucked it was that this was how they had to meet. Not at their wedding, not somewhere, anywhere else, but there where Carroll’s absence loomed between them. But instead, he just asked her how she’d been doing. And she had said she was fine. Working through it. Getting through it. And he’d reached over to pat her hand. The touch had echoed. He’d cried in his car. Taken 100 mg of codeine, nearly licked the cap for some of the pill’s dust. Let himself drift off, head resting on the steering wheel. He’d woken up disoriented a few hours later, the sky dark, the parking lot empty. He’d fumbled with the door, slamming it open to throw up on the asphalt, hand gripping tight on the car door. The dinging pounding in his brain. It hadn’t been long after that when he stumbled sheepishly into his first NA meeting.

The pain he’d been feeling when the doctors on the base gave him that first prescription had been psychosomatic. Which he’d known. Because every time those headaches would rocket through him the image of Carroll’s head splitting at the seams would flash behind his eyes. But he’d just wanted something to force the pain from his body. Something to let him sleep. A cold wind comes rushing off the mountain, scattering the memories of that hot, endless summer. Cullen shivers, pulls his scarf a little tighter.

The storm is rolling down the mountain in earnest by the time Cullen heads back down Main Street toward home. The snowflakes are falling thicker now, sticking heavy to the roads and sidewalks. Carroll sniffs at them, letting a few melt on his wide tongue. Cullen reaches down to scratch him behind the ears. He looks doe-eyed up at him, tongue wagging. The wind bites. They pick up their pace.

Cullen glances up at the mountain at the wavering lights of the ski lifts. The slopes are still closed, trails too. The pass was open until late afternoon, but they haven’t been letting cars over for hours. Cullen’s expecting a quiet night, a chance to, hopefully, catch up on sleep. And so, when his phone buzzes in his pocket, he groans, a headache already growing at his temples.

But when he unlocks his phone, he sees that it’s not work. It’s not even a number he recognizes. 213 area code. He’s not even sure what state that’s from. Not a Colorado number, that’s for sure. He opens it.

_Hey_

_I just wanted to say thank you for yesterday._

Cullen slows to a stop, ducking off the main street toward the house. His heart is beating a little raggedly in his chest, inside sort of fluttering. His phone vibrates again.

_Sorry, this is Livie._

Another buzz.

_From the café._

Another.

_And um from the grocery too, I guess._

He reads it in her voice, can almost see her fussing nervously with her hair, eyes scanning the room. Cullen wants to tell her that she doesn’t need to apologize to him, that she doesn’t need to be nervous when she talks to him. But there’s something decidedly scumbaggy about that, so instead he just types:

_No problem._

He flinches. That’s too short, isn’t it? Almost gruff.

_Right, cool._

_Anyway_

_Have a good rest of your day._

Cullen curses. Definitely too short. His thumbs hover over his screen, glancing over at Carroll. He pants happily, cocking his head. Cullen drags his free hand through his hair. He sighs, then starts to type.

_Let me know if you need anything._

He flinches again. The text sounds cranky, dismissive. She follows suit.

_Thanks._

Cullen chews the inside of his cheek, tapping his thumbs uselessly on the phone. He sighs, rolling his neck.

_How did the beans turn out?_

He waits for her to respond, pulling his scarf closer around him as the wind picks up. He waits. Nothing. Cullen tucks his phone back into his pocket, brushes his hair against off his forehead. He can feel the livid heat of his blush. “Maker,” he rubs at his temples, “why are you so bad at this?”

Rylen’s watching football. Perched on the couch so completely consumed that he barely acknowledges Cullen except to nod at the open pizza box on the kitchen counter. Cullen grabs a slice, taking a few cold bites. The cheese is congealed, his stomach gurgles. Carroll plops onto the couch, resting his head on Rylen’s lap, deciding apparently that he is better company.

Cullen crosses his arms over his chest, finishing the rest of the slice in a couple bites. He glances out the kitchen window. Wind is lashing the glass now, the snow so heavy he can’t see past it. Rylen looks over the back of the couch at him. “You alright, man?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m uh,” his phone buzzes. His slides it open to find another text from Livie. A strange relief washes over him. “I’m good, actually. Really good.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Yeah.” Cullen opens the message. It’s a picture. A closeup of a bowl, just the faintest sliver of the counter it’s sitting on. In it, what looks like stewed beans flecked with oil, some herb he can’t identify. A crust heel of bread half in, half out of the shot. It looks delicious. Warm. Sort of cozy. He smiles without even realizing. His phone buzzes again.

_So far so good :)_

Cullen looks back out at the storm churning outside. There’s something incongruent about it. Her cheerful text, the cozy photo. Rylen told him that she’s living alone in one of those summer houses up on the ridge. That the night of the first blizzard, she’d been so flustered he’d nearly offered their couch up for her to crash on. That day at the café her fear had been so palpable he could almost taste it. Cullen swallows hard.

_Take care now. Another blizzard rolling through._

_Call me if you need anything._

_Happy to help._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	8. Chapter 8

It’s funny what Livie notices now. What stands out. Because right now, as Livie lingers just in front of the wall of ice cream, all she can see is this girl’s lips. Or lipstick rather. A bright coral color bordering on orange, smeared a little outside her lips. Not like she’s overlined them on purpose, but instead like she’d put it on without looking in a mirror. It sort of looks like she cut her bangs that way too. They’re a couple inches above her eyebrows and jagged like she cut them with craft scissors.

But honestly, she’s kind of pulling it off. Her platinum hair just the right amount of messy pretty, the smudge of her smoky eye more almost sultry. Her faded jeans are full of holes and patches, the plaid shirt she’s wearing so worn in the elbows that her ruddy skin pokes through, but it’s a look. She adjusts the green apron around her waist, the Natural Grocer logo on her chest a little faded, peeling on the edges. It’s all a lot to take in. But Livie keeps returning to her lips. To the way the color is thick just under her bottom lip, a chunk of the lipstick just sitting on her skin. Livie can’t pull her eyes away no matter how hard she tries to. 

Maybe she’s just not used to looking. Maybe after more than a year of keeping her head down and blinders on, she’s finally allowed to just look, and she’s forgotten how freeing that feels. And her skills have been refined in a way they weren’t before. She would watch Howe like a hawk, become fluent in his body, the cadence of his voice. A twitch in the muscles in his neck, a slightly raised eyebrow. At the end, even a change in his breathing could signify the coming storm.

But when the girl she’s been staring at finally stares back, head cocked a little mockingly, Livie realizes she might be a little out of practice with the rest of the world. Livie straightens up. “Oh.” Something seems to dawn on the woman. Livie watches as she tucks a tiny bottle of essential oil into the pocket of her jeans and then it dawns on Livie too. She’s shoplifting. “Oh!”

“I’m, uh…I’m doing inventory.”

Livie shuts the freezer door. “Right. Yeah. Of course.”

The girl scowls. “Don’t snitch, okay? My manager’s on break.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Livie rests her hands on her cart. It’s full of odds and ends. More than she needs. Especially since she’s barely gotten through the stuff she bought a few days ago. But she keeps coming back here. To this store. Sometimes just to wander.

The girl exhales. “Cool.” She stuffs another bottle of essential oil into her pocket then sticks her hand out. “I’m Sera.”

Livie hesitates, then reaches out and shakes it. “Livie.”

“Livie. Cool.” Sera sniffs, glancing over her shoulder before looking back at Livie. Her eyes skim Livie’s cart and she feels suddenly insecure, like she needs to explain its contents. She’s got a bag of chia seeds the size of her torso sitting in the back of it. Dorian used to make chia seed pudding in the mornings. _Roughage,_ he’d say with a wink. Howe hated shit like that. Too fussy, too much work. Livie always suspected there was some part of him that felt intimidated by it, by anything he couldn’t master, anything just outside his understanding. They ate eggs for breakfast every day for a year. Scrambled. Slightly undercooked. He told her once that was how the French cooked them. Livie’s stomach turns.

“So you’re new then, yeah?”

Livie blinks up at her. It isn’t really a question and, for a moment, her mouth just hangs open like a fish. Then she clears her throat. “Um, yeah.”

Sera sniffs. “Weird.” Then she shrugs. “But whatever, I guess.” Her ears twitch at the sound of a swinging door and both of them watch as an older man in a matching green apron comes out from the back. Sera glances at Livie and Livie just shrugs. That seems to settle her. She pats her jean pocket then looks back out toward the front of the store. “Fucking blizzard tonight.”

Livie sighs. “Are you serious? Another one?”

Sera looks back at her with a grin, looking genuinely pleased. “Welcome to hell dude, welcome to hell.”

It’s late afternoon. The sun arches along the treetops, casting golden light across the freshly fallen snow as Livie pulls her groceries from the trunk of the jeep. This high up she can see the storm come rolling over the peaks. A grey mass obscuring the white-topped peaks as it churns down toward the town below. Livie sets the groceries on the ground and, for a moment, she just looks. From the top of the steep drive, she can see the twinkling lights from the town, the steam rising up from the hot springs. She feels enormous, almost ethereal. Set apart from the town. Hidden. A chilly wind skitters through the pines, pulling her hair from her scarf, brushing it across her face. With a heavy sigh, she picks her groceries back up and heads in toward the house. As she’s nudging open the front door she spots a line of delicate tracks coming up from one of the bushes and circling the door. She crouches down, her shoulders aching a little from carrying the bags. They’re rabbit tracks. She’s almost sure. Her father taught her something about that when she was a kid, how to identify tracks, how to find your way when you get lost. Livie presses her fingers into the packed snow, tracing the outline of the tracks. She remembers the rabbit shivering under the bush, blood caked around its mouth. She shivers at the memory, the cold racing up her skin. She ducks into the warmth of the house.

Livie figures the rabbit won’t care if she peels the carrots or not, but she does it anyway. Chops them into little pieces, tears at some greens, and arranges them all on a little plate. She drapes a tea towel over her arm and heads back out the front door.

She brushes snow away with her bare fingers, carving out a little spot just underneath the bush where she’d seen the rabbit before, and lays the towel on the cold ground. She bunches it around the edges like a little bed and sets the lettuce and carrots along one end, rocking back on her haunches to get a better look at her work. A chilly wind rushes up over the ridge, carrying with it the smell of pine and the faint scent of sulfur. The snow has started up again, thick heavy flakes that stick to Livie’s hair, her eyelashes.

It all feels a little silly to be sitting here, making a bed for a rabbit that may already be dead. But it feels right too in some almost primordial way. Somewhere warm to rest, something to eat. Livie swallows hard. There’s a part of her, louder now than it’s maybe ever been, that wants to curl up there, to tuck herself in, hidden away from the rest of the world, just exposed enough to the elements to feel that tender cruelty that feels so intrinsic now. Inescapable.

She settles for the living room. Tries to stoke something resembling a fire in the art deco fireplace but just gets a face full of smoke. So she gives up on that and sits instead cross-legged on the ornate rug in front of the looming entertainment center, digging through the Pavus’ collection of vhs tapes. The wind batters against the windows, their panes shaking against the force. But the house holds. Sturdy, steady. Quiet. All locked up. Her fear is a simmer. She tries to let it go, tries not to let it rush over her again. It’s easier when she pours all her focus into this cabinet of tapes. The titles don’t surprise her. Not given what she’s found in the house so far. She can’t find a single thing made after !990. What she does find is mostly art films, some eighties classics, a self-help tape called _Building Your Best You,_ and something that looks an awful lot like porn.

Livie picks _Moonstruc_ k because there’s something about the way Cher is standing on the cover, arms spread, half jumping that makes her feel…well, she’s not really sure how it makes her feel. Maybe a little dangerous, maybe a little free. It’s a stupid notion. It’s just a movie. She slides it into the VHS player anyway.

Livie doesn’t get very far – just the first few minutes of the camera panning over a New York skyline drenched in blue – before the smell of the fire, the warmth of the blankets she’s wrapped herself up in on the couch lulls her softly to sleep.

And then the softness is all edges and then her fingers are pressed against the paned glass of that tall window in Howe’s living room. The one that overlooks the city stretching twinkling below, so far away, so totally inaccessible to her. It spreads out until it meets the inky ocean, nothingness beyond. She’d watched a rare storm roll in that night, lightning slicing across the sky, casting the palms along Howe’s front walk in a brief, eerie glow. _I love you more than any person or any thing,_ he’d said as her ears rang, _you are my soulmate._ Her mouth tasted metallic when she told him, taking his hand when he offered it, that she loved him too. _It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s fine._ His hands had been tender again, like they’d never hurt her at all, soft against her cheek, the storm kicking up around them, a smell like copper, like something electric. Palm fronds beating hard against the windowpanes.

Livie wakes gasping, her chest so tight she has to gulp for air. She nearly tumbles off the couch, righting herself only just as she stars to slip, one head steadying on the hardwood. Livie sits up, rubbing at her eyes. The fire she’d tried to make is now just smoldering embers. They pop and smoke, pieces of charred wood smoldering. Livie brushes her hair from her face and tries to get her bearings. Pieces of the dream are sticking to her. It had been a kaleidoscope of her own memories. A mish mash of nights and touches and feelings that feel as real here as they had in that godforsaken house up in Malibu West. Livie tugs at her clothes, feeling suddenly engulfed in them. She’s been living in these same jeans, in the flannels she picked up at the Goodwill down by the grocery store. They feel, sometimes, like armor. Like a defense from another life. So far from anything she would have worn in Los Angeles.

Livie stands, a little surprised that she can, that she doesn’t waver. She fusses with the fireplace, producing another cloud of smoke, before abandoning the endeavor entirely and heading, as if in a trance, for the front door. It takes a hard shove to open it, a heavy layer of snow has fallen while she slept. It’s dark, but the falling, drifting snow makes the night seem almost bright. She has no idea what time it is. Keeping her phone off has left her in a kind of limbo. An isolation that feels at once freeing and terrifying. She tries not to think too much about it and instead crouches down beside the bush. The towel is a little rumpled, some of the carrots gnawed on the edge, like the rabbit had swooped in to take a few hurried bites, too afraid to linger long. There’s a twinge of something she doesn’t quite know what to call in her chest. Livie stands, brushing some snow from her jeans. Her stomach growls. She looks out at the white nothingness of the storm then back at the quiet glow of the house. She heads back inside, locking the door behind her, relishing the sound of it.

The broth turned out good which was, honestly, a bit of a surprise. It’s been so long since she’s cooked things like this and she’s been mostly winging it, just her and her hedonistically full fridge. It occurs to her, as she measures out a serving of pasta in her hand and tosses it into the broth, that this might be the most cooking this kitchen has ever seen. Dorian’s mother categorically, seemingly _on principle_ , refused to cook and his father had been nothing more than a shadow during all the times she stayed with the family. They ate out, with relish. She’d gained nearly fifteen pounds one summer on Lake Como, spending long days beside the crystal blue water, eating her weight in citrusy risotto, fresh mozzarella, and pounds and pounds of salted shad, mopped up with olive oil and fresh bread. They used the kitchen in their rental home only as a place to chill wine, to sometimes make espresso on the stove. Remembers too, in almost technicolor detail, the pan of absolutely charred eggs Dorian’s mother once presented her over a snowy winter break in Jackson Hole. Livie’s sudden urge to call her long-dead father to tell him about it had sent her scrambling tearfully toward the bathroom.

Livie cracks an egg on the edge of the kitchen counter, let’s the white run through her fingers into the sink, the yolk a deep orange in her palm. She isn’t sure really sure why all these memories are resurfacing now, here. And any exploration into the answer makes her feel vulnerable all over again. So she focuses on the food. The pasta’s cooked, the broth reduced to a thick, shimmery sauce. With one hand, she tips the pan onto a plate, takes a fork to swirl the pasta into a little nest. The yolk sits like jewel at the center. Livie leans back and takes a long, steadying breath. She lets her eyes flutter closed, listens to the sound of the wind roaring outside, the quiet hum of the house’s central heating. She takes another deep breath and opens her eyes.

The yolk breaks with a single tap of her fork. It feels luxurious. A second dinner. A raw yolk. A nap. Maker, she can’t remember the last time she just napped. Livie pours herself a glass of wine, the last of the red she’s been working her way through all week. She slipped her jeans off before she put the broth on and the feeling of standing here, alone, barefoot and just in a flannel, is a luxury too. Livie takes a long sip of wine, then takes her plate in both hands, pushing away from the counter. She sways, hips rocking softly side to side. She dances slowly around the island, bite after bite of her food, the tension high in her shoulders uncoiling. If only a little. Livie starts to hum. No song in particular, no real melody except whatever comes to her, keeping time to the steady beat of the storm outside. The howling of the wind, the pine boughs against the window. Her thoughts drift. To Cullen. Which surprises her, though maybe it shouldn’t. She’d texted him during dinner, a strange almost frightening impulse, reminded of his quiet smile as she’d blistered some of her beans in olive oil. Despite his short, almost curt, responses, the conversation had made her feel light. Maybe it was the memory of his eyes. Soft, almost boyish. A sweetness she’d noticed the very first time she saw him in the parking lot of the grocery store. She’s thinking of them now, as she finishes her food and sets her plate down in the sink. Livie closes her eyes and keeps swaying. It’s almost easy to imagine him here in the kitchen, his skin ruddy from the cold, golden curls tousled by the wind. She imagines wrapping one around her finger, pulling him closer. She can almost feel his heat and, as she rocks her hips back and forth, imagines that those big, calloused hands of his sliding along her waist. She imagines rocking back, feeling the solid wall of his chest against her back, the warmth of his breath against the crown of her head. It’s easy to imagine him here, easy to imagine him touching her. And it’s easy too for her thoughts to turn. For those strong hands around her hips to travel up, to encircle her throat. Livie’s thoughts come crashing to halt. Everything feels still. Her heart, the wind outside. Her ears ring, her heart loud as it pounds against her chest. The house suddenly vacuous and when the ringing in her ears settles, the wind is screaming against the windows, a frightful sound. She leans heavily on the counter, trying to catch her breath, thoughts racing. She feels sick, afraid. But mostly foolish. Dreamy and naïve. And those are maybe the most dangerous things of all. Livie wipes at her cheeks, humiliated to find tears streaming down them. She reaches blindly for her glass of wine, lets the last few sips rush down her throat before leaning again against the counter. Her arms don’t want to hold her; she presses her forehead to the counter’s cool surface. Her fingers are trembling, a numbness settling into her lips. She stands, suddenly full of a wild, almost manic energy. She’s going to check the front door. She’s going to check every single window in the house. She has one job now and one alone. Livie glances down at her dead phone. She will keep herself safe here. She _will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3 <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, long time no see. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update this. Things have been crazy for me as I'm sure they've been for all of you and writing this particular fic takes a lot more time for me than some of my others. And in the same vein: please excuse any glaring typos or grammatical errors. I plan to go back over this chapter with a fine-toothed comb, but I just wanted to get it out into the world today. 
> 
> As always: mind the tags. There are graphic depictions of domestic violence in this fic. Take care of yourselves <3

She’s doing alright. It’s a self-assessment that Livie makes that morning as she pours herself a cup of coffee. She stands by the front window, sipping her coffee, still wrapped in one of those bulky flannels she’d picked up from the secondhand store. The sky is a pale, placid, hardly a cloud in the sky, the snowcapped peaks in the distance glittering under the brilliant sun. She takes a long, deep breath. Her ribs are still tender to the touch, that bruise still just as dark and angry as that morning in the Denver airport, but it doesn’t ache to breathe anymore. Livie takes another long breath, just for the hell of it.

She really is doing alright, Livie thinks as she drives into town. She spends an hour or so meandering around the town’s lone bookstore, flipping through frayed cookbooks and dusty garden planning guides. The place has a whole shelf devoted to various translations of the Chant of Light and a faded Loghian Mac Tir campaign poster above the register, his face rendered in a sketchy black and white. _Mac Tir ’84_ in bold blue letters at the bottom. _It’s Morning Again in America_ an arch of red, white and blue over his head. The woman behind the counter is fixing her with the kind of suspicious down home look she’d been expecting, but the store still feels cozy, the glance somehow right.

Livie has lunch at the same little café she had with Cullen, feels a little embarrassed that part of her hopes he’ll be there. He isn’t but the inside still has that same woodsy warmth it did that day. She orders a tuna sandwich, some chips. Eats it at the far table, watching the skiers as they come and go. Livie grabs a muffin, tucks it into her pocket for later. The woman behind the counter smiles as she pays. “Didn’t I see you in here the other day?” The panic that spikes inside of her is brief. Livie manages a smile back. She sees Rylan as she heads back to her car, driving with the windows down in his forest service truck, returns his wave. He’s probably heading up the pass, heard on the radio that morning that another big storm is rolling into town. Livie looks up at the sky, just as clear and blue as it had been that morning, and wonders when the storm will roll in. She can almost smell it. A zing in the air, a milky crispness. She heads down the short stones and thinks of how much taller Cullen is than she is. It’s an odd thought, a sort of disjointed, strange sort of thing, but as she stands just off the sidewalk, she remembers looking up at him, the sun glinting gold off his hair. The thought stays with her all the way home, the sun filtering softly through her windshield

And it’s all starting to feel a little too nice, suspiciously nice. So when – halfway through dinner, poised over the kitchen sink, spaghetti wrapped around her fork, glistening with butter and flecks of herbs – the lights flicker, it feels, at first, like a relief. Like yes, of course, something bad had to happen. This is, in the basest sense, the order of the universe righting itself. The lights flicker again, this time the darkness lingers before the lights come flooding back to life. Livie pauses, sets her fork down on her plate with a soft clank, and looks out the kitchen window. She hadn’t noticed the darkness before, creeping up around the trees. Livie turns to look at the clock on the microwave. It’s only 4pm. It shouldn’t be dark yet, the sun should still be simmering just over the mountaintops. Like a cracked yolk, she thought to herself once, watching it sink under the horizon line from the windows in the master bedroom.

Livie heads to the window and finds herself looking up instead at dark, churning clouds. The windowpanes rattle in the wind, a sharp, singular howl rolls through the house. Every hair on her neck stands straight on end. _It’s fine_ , she tells herself. “It’s fine,” she says firmly out loud. The lights flicker again and then they go out. The light doesn’t return. 

It takes a moment for the panic to settle in, takes a moment for the darkness to start to breathe around her, to swell. But once it does, she’s a flurry of movement, feeling blindly along the counter for her phone. It takes her two tries to turn it on once she finds it, fingers trembling. She swipes away a single voicemail from Howe, that faint twinge of familiar fear in her chest fleeting as the darkness closes in inky around her. The flashlight on her phone pools light around her feet and Livie hesitates, a sudden, claustrophobic dread rushing over her. She can almost feel him inside the house, the dark, swirling, manic energy of his presence thick in the air. The light at her feet wavers, fingers shaking now. He’s going to be there. Going to be standing in the kitchen doorway when she lifts her phone. He’ll be smiling, probably, that wide, half-toothed smile he always had when he was _livid._ But he isn’t there. Because of course, he isn’t, the empty hallway a wash of warm wood as the light from her phone falls over it. Livie exhales, her shoulders still tight, and tries to still the trembling in her hands. 

Her eyes have adjusted some by the time she heads out to the front window. The storm that threatened all evening on the radio has started in earnest. Big, thick flakes of snow settling heavily on the driveway, weighing down the already drooping pine boughs. Another wind comes rolling over the house, rattling the panes, and Livie can feel the chill of it slip from under the door, goosebumps racing up her skin. The whole house feels about ten degrees colder than when she’d made dinner and that quick, jumpy panic ignites inside of her again.

“It’s the breaker box, right?” Dorian’s voice comes crackling through her phone, a little muted from where she’s laid it on the bedside table with the speaker on. The service up here is touch and go. There’ve been more than a few times her calls to Dorian or Leliana have dropped mid-sentence, words cut clean in half. Funny that, how all of Howe’s messages seem to have no problem getting through.

“I was hoping you would know.” Livie leans against the bed, huffing a little from the effort it’s taking her to pull her snow boots on. She bought them at the same Goodwill she’s bought everything. They’re a size too big and about fifteen pounds heavier than any pair of shoes she’s ever worn. And her ribs are aching. More than they were before.

Dorian chuckles, his laugh ending in a soft trill as the connection wavers. “Ah, overestimating me again, are we my dear?”

“Dorian!” The only light is still coming from her phone, spilling like a weak fountain over the bedside table.

“Alright, alright. Let me google.”

Livie glances up at her phone, still lacing her boots. “You have to google? This is _your_ house, Dorian.”

“A house I haven’t visited in probably a decade, my dear, so watch your tone.” Livie snorts, shrugging Mrs. Pavus’ coat over her shoulder and resting her phone back in the palm of her hand, careful to let the light spill out in front of her. “Alright, so,” she can hear him shifting, imagines the phone is probably pressed between his cheek and his shoulder, “according to google the breaker box should be out back.”

Livie rolls her eyes. “I could have told you that.”

“Then why, pray tell, are you calling me?”

Livie heads down the hallway toward the stairs, one hand anchored on the wall. Trying hard not to look behind her as she goes, trying hard not to let the feeling that Howe is just a breath away overtake her. “I was hoping you could tell me how to fix it. Or if the problem is even with the breaker box.”

“What else would it be with?”

Livie starts down the stairs, the wind whistling loudly as it rolls through the attic. “I don’t know. Like maybe a tree fell on the power line or something.”

“Oh darling, you would _hear_ that.” Livie shivers, grateful suddenly to be back in the front room, where the falling snow has cast some light in through the windows. “Alright, so as far as I can tell, all you need to do is open up the breaker and switch the tripped whatever bit.”

“How do I know which one is tripped?” Livie presses her hand to the door, finds the wood cold as metal against her palm.

“According to this, it should be obvious. Should say _off_ or something like it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Livie takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re alright, Livie.” She pauses, glances down at her phone, at the picture of him smiling on a promenade in Athens and her chest tightens. She wipes angrily at a stray tear. “It’s just a storm, you’re alright.”

“I know,” they’re falling steadier now, rolling down her face. “I know. Thank you for taking my call.”

“I’ll always take your call. You know that. _Always._ ”

Livie doesn’t make it to the breaker box. Doesn’t make it even around the house. Because with each step that howling wind rattles something inside of her, shakes loose the dread that had burn quick as a wick in the kitchen and lets it make itself comfortable just under her skin. The pine forest that sits at the back of the house, snaking up the remainder of the mountain, thins out some when it edges onto the Pavus’ property, but the trees are still dense and tall and looming and the darkness under their bows is full of frightening potential. Each step she takes feels like she’s careening backward, spading herself under into a muck of memories that take on a sharp clarity here in the darkness.

She’s dialing his number before she even makes it back to the front porch, before she can talk herself out of it. There’s a part of her that wants to just hunker down with every blanket she can find and wait til the morning to take better stock. The cold wind beating relentlessly against her as she walks keeps that part of her solidly in its place. But she still jumps nearly out of her skin at his sleepy hello.

“Oh maker, did I wake you.”

She hears Culllen grunt over the phone, hears him shift, a quick rustle of clothing. “No, no I just…I must have drifted off in front of the tv.” She hears him clear his throat, his voice steadier when he speaks next. Almost business-like, serious. “Are you alright?”

“I’m…um.” To her humiliation, her voice starts to crack. The wind is still roaring, loud even now that she’s ducked onto the porch, standing in the light of the solar lamp secured beside the door. “I’ve been better actually.” His chuckle is warm. “My, um, my power is out actually.”

She hears him whistle. “By the Maker’s grace that is poor timing.”

Livie manages a laugh of her own. “I know, I know. I called my friend. The one who owns this place and he was…he’s not great with this technical stuff either. I just figured…that since you’re with the forest service…that since you’re…” She trails off, not exactly sure what she wants to say. _You’re so judgmental,_ Howe told her once. More than once actually. _You always think you have everything figured out about people, but you don’t really know anyone at all._ Livie swallows hard, wavers a little, the phone still pressed to her ear. That’s what she’s doing, isn’t it? Right now. Calling this man she barely knows because he looks big and strong and capable and she’s got some notion that he owes her anything at all. Andraste’s fucking tits, how absolutely, completely fucking-

“Livie.” She goes rigid, nearly drops her phone. “Livie, are you still on the line?” 

“Yes, sorry. The service isn’t always the best up here.”

“It’s no problem. I was just asking if you wanted me to talk you through it.”

Livie frowns. Her fingers are going numb, cheeks tight from the cold, and her brain absolutely useless, devoid of coherent thought. “Talk me through it?”

“Getting your power back on.”

“Oh.” She glances over toward the front drive. The darkness is deeper now, more devoid of color than anything she’s ever seen in her life. “Um, yeah okay. Thank you.”

“Or how’s this? I’m dropping some things off for Rylen in an hour anyway. Right at the base of the pass. I can head up on my way back. Take a look for you.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that in this weather.

He chuckles again. “Ah, this isn’t even close to the worst thing I’ve driven in. Besides, this is really not the night to be without power, Livie.”

She swallows hard, fingers drifting unconsciously to her neck, but she barely stem the tide of relief that is rushing through her. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

Livie watches his car from inside the house, watches as the snow piles on the beat-up Bronco’s hood, and she tries not to worry too much about how afraid she isn’t. It’s difficult these days to sort of rational from irrational, to try and take stock of what she should or shouldn’t pay attention to. Some mornings, she’ll sit at the kitchen island, mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hand, and just try to make sense of them. Try to understand herself, whatever that means now. Most of her thoughts, she’s decided, are stuck in LA, stuck behind that palm-lined drive up to Howe’s house. And she tries to figure out, as she stands waiting in Dorian’s dark house, if her old self would have let this near stranger come to her house in the middle of the night. It becomes a moot point. The lights flicker. She glances up at them. They flicker again and then the whole room lights up, a rush of warmth coming up through the vents. She spots Cullen coming trudging through the snow around the house and opens the door for him. He unwinds his scarf from his face, revealing his reddened cheeks, then kicks his boots at the door to dislodge the snow before he steps inside. “All set,” he says with a smile. “I’m glad I came up. Needed a little more finesse than I thought it would. Not sure I would have been able to talk you through that.” He has snow caked in his curls, packed into his coat. Livie can feel the cold wafting off him and she glances back out the window. The snow is falling heavier now, at a harsh diagonal, and she can barely see past the porch light, can’t see his car at all anymore.

She turns back to him. “Are you going to be able to make it back to town in this?

He laughs nervously, reaches up to scratch at his neck. “Well, about that. I’m not sure the old girl can get me down tonight but, uh, I’ve got a buddy who plows the man roads. I’m gonna call him and have him swing over. I’d come pick up the car in the morning. I’d just need to hang around for a few hours, if that’s alright. I can make myself scarce.”

“You can just stay the night.” They both seem surprised by what she’s just said. His eyes widen, a blush creeping up his neck. But Livie doubles down. She’s grateful and for once she wants to _be_ grateful, wants to do what _she_ wants to do. “It’s not a problem. I’ve got plenty of room.”

She watches Cullen’s adam’s apple bob in his throat. He’s got his hands stuffed into the pockets of his faded jeans, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet like a kid. A sharp contrast from the capable, calm man who’d shown up at her doorstep. “I don’t want to intrude” 

“You’re not.” He narrows his eyes at her. She smiles. “It’s the least I can do. You saved my skin tonight.” Livie glances around the lit entryway. “Literally.”

Even though she’s eaten, dinner seems an obvious choice. It’s been bred into her, really. That overflowing Trevelyan southern hospitality. And Cullen doesn’t seem to mind when she offers, nodding enthusiastically, casting furtive glances her way as he starts in on the olives she set out in a bowl.

“Do you cook a lot,” he asks, voice a little muffled from the olive in his mouth.

“Um, I used to, yeah. I’m…getting back into it.”

“Huh,” Cullen plops another olive into his mouth and leans up against the counter where she’s chopping. Livie glances over at him. He’s in the same plaid shirt she always sees him in, this one in shades of ochre, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms. She spots a scar just above his wrist, brutal and deep. She looks away, her heart steady and quick at the base of her throat, and pours salt into her palm, tosses it into the roiling pot of water on the stove. “Maker, that’s a lot of salt.”

Livie turns to him, eyebrow raised, just the faintest grin on her lips. “Don’t backseat cook.”

Cullen’s eyes widen, a look of genuine horror on his face, before it dawns on him that she’s joking. He laughs weakly, rubbing his neck again, that blush racing up from his collar. “No, no sorry. I just…” he looks a little off-center, one side of his mouth ticking up, “I don’t really cook.”

She cocks her head at him, measuring two servings of pasta in her hand and dropping them into the pot. The windows rattle again, drawing both their attention. Livie glances back at her phone, off now, and tries not to let the shiver drifting up her spine settle in. “Don’t like it?”

“Never learned how.” He shrugs, and then, by way of explanation, says, “I was in the military.”

“Oh.” Livie gives him another once over, adding this new information to her assessment of him. She can see it and she can’t. _Not that you know anything about the military,_ she scolds herself.

“Yeah,” he turns to lean his back against the side of the counter, arms crossed over his chest, “since I was eighteen.”

“Maker, that’s young.”

Cullen chuckles, nodding his head. “Yes, a _very_ long time ago.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, I um left about a year ago. Year and a half.” Livie catches something dart across his eyes, just quickly, before he’s back again, looking a little sheepish. “Didn’t really learn to cook much. Nothing I’d want to eat at least.”

Livie laughs, trying to keep it light. “I guess I could see that.”

“I mean that’s probably not fair of me. Lots of vets know how to cook. Lots of soldiers too, I just…I don’t know. Never found the time, I guess.”

Livie slips a couple pads of butter into a pan, swirls them around, then starts in on a bunch of parsley. “I mean, it’s not everybody’s thing,” He nods, smiling, toasting her with the glass of water she set out before taking a sip. Live can’t help but smile, really smile, but when she bumps her hip absentmindedly against an open drawer, the pain that shoots up her ribs is so intense she curls in on herself, holding her ribs tightly, sucking a pained breath through her teeth.

Cullen sets his glass down, bending a little to get a better look at her. “Are you alright?”

Livie takes another pained, rattly breath and stands, fingers still lingering over the tender skin of her side. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just, um, had a nasty fall a little bit ago.” She pauses. It was automatic, a well-trained impulse, and she has a sudden desire to say something else. _A man almost killed me. A man I used to love._ But she doesn’t. Just turns back to the pasta.

Cullen is still looking intently at her, brows knitted. She can see it from the corner of her eyes. “How nasty?”

“Pretty nasty.”

Cullen nods, fidgeting with the saltshaker. She’s noticed that about him, his need to fidget. It’s so at odds with the stoic man she’d met in the parking lot. “I’m a paramedic you know.”

Livie swallows hard. She feels almost feverish, like all her blood is rushing to her head. “So you said.”

“Just if you wanted me to….” he shakes his head, laughing a little, “I don’t know what I’m saying. Sorry.”

Livie takes two plates from the cupboard above the stove and hands them both to Cullen. “It’s fine. Thank you.”

Maybe it’s because he’s here. Because she’s not alone in the house anymore. It’s knowledge that makes her feel both very safe and very doomed and as she pulls her shirt over her head and sets it neatly on top of the dresser, she tries to understand what that means. What she should do with it Or maybe the night has been going to well and to sit here in the muck of her own memories feels like a sacrifice, like something left on the altar of an old god. _I haven’t forgotten. I won’t ask for too much._ Yes, that’s probably it. The Trevelyans may be boisterous, gentile southerners, and she may be a Trevelyan through and through, but her Cousland blood demands grim, punishing contemplation. Self-reflection bordering on self-flagellation. It’s a trick she learned from her mother. _Hope is what will drain you,_ her mother told her one night just a few weeks after her father’s death. Found her sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, nursing a drink. _If you live ignorant in happiness for too long, the universe will right itself._ She hadn’t said it to anyone really. Her eyes glazed, looking at nothing. Livie had crept up to her room that night. Hadn’t slept a wink.

And so it’s too easy perhaps, as she peels her jeans down her legs, to wade into the dark waters of her own memories. Of the first night he hit her. Knocked her clean across the face, pulled her so rough up to their bedroom she’d had bruises on both wrists in the morning. He’d iced them over breakfast, crying quietly while she’d sat stony at the table. _I’ve never done that before. I’ve never done anything like that. You have to believe me, Livie. I’ve never done anything like that_. She’d forgiven him, told him so over and over and tried to believe it, even though that deep, dark penchant for suffering, that genetic Cousland dread, told her even that first night that she was ending her own life, that she was walking off the edge of a cliff. 

Livie slips into bed, pulls the covers up over her chin like she’s a little girl. She’d forgiven him that last night too. Told him so at least. When he’d wrapped his hands around her throat and left her there in the darkness. She’d woken up early the next morning, still in that same spot on the rug and he’d still been livid. Furious. She’d coaxed him to bed, stroked his hair. _It’s okay,_ she’d hold him, just like the first night, _it’s okay._ And when his breathing slowed, when he drifted off back to sleep, she’d waited for a moment. Studying his face. Every line and freckle and spot. And then she’d run.

Livie runs her hands over her face, tries to breathe deeply now, outright shaking. She’s trying to count her breathe in and out, trying to rub the tight, awful feeling in her chest away, when she hears it. At first, she can’t figure out what it is. Like a steady, rhythmic hum. She sits up, frowning, and then it dawns on her. It’s Cullen. Snoring. Louder even than the sound of the wind outside. Livie exhales, smiling, relieved, and that tight thing in her chest uncoils just a little. He has a bend in his nose, she remembers, just a slight one. Probably from an old break. That must be why he snores. She lays back, palms flat on her belly, and just listens. To the sound of him sleeping, here in her house. She turns to watch the snow fall, watch it collect on the sill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	10. ~update~ not a chapter!!!!

Hi guys! Long time no talk. As many of you have probably noticed, it's been a while since this fic has been updated. I want to say first of all that it's absolutely not being abandoned. I'm just trying to work through some bigger issues with the plot and do a little more planning for it. 

It might be a few months before this is updated, but like I said, it's far from abandoned. Thank you so much for reading and for all your kudos and comments. They mean the world <3 


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